Controller, AirGarage
$200-250k
+ Equity
Quickbooks
Senior and Expert level
San Francisco Bay Area
Remote from US
Parking management solution
Posted today
Parking management solution
101-200 employees
B2BTransportPaymentsReal Estate
Posted today
$200-250k
+ Equity
Quickbooks
Senior and Expert level
San Francisco Bay Area
Remote from US
101-200 employees
B2BTransportPaymentsReal Estate
Company mission
To rethink the 30% of downtown city real estate dedicated to parking.
Role
Who you are
- Deep technical accounting chops: CPA (or equivalent rigor) with real command of GAAP, especially revenue recognition for transactional or marketplace-style businesses. You know the standards and, more importantly, how to apply them pragmatically
- You've done the messy middle before: You've been the senior-most accounting owner (Controller, Assistant Controller, or Director of Accounting) at a venture-backed company as it scaled through rapid growth and you personally did the work, not just supervised it
- ERP migration experience: You've led (not observed) a move off QuickBooks onto a modern ERP. You know where these projects go wrong and how to land them on time
- Cash-to-accrual conversion experience: You've taken a company's books from cash-basis or hybrid to full accrual and lived to tell the tale
- Audit experience: You've prepared a company for and taken it through financial statement audits. Ideally its first one, which is a different animal than its fifth
- Systems thinker: You're comfortable working alongside data teams, wielding a data pipeline, and designing processes where the system of record does the work instead of a spreadsheet. You'd rather automate a reconciliation than perform one
- Hands-on operator: You'll design the close checklist at 10am and personally clear a gnarly reconciliation at 2pm. A lean team means the Controller still touches the work every day
- Complexity is your comfort zone: Multi-location, multi-jurisdiction, revenue-share, or payments-heavy business exposure. If your entire career is clean single-entity SaaS subscription revenue, this business will surprise you daily
- Pride in the craft: You genuinely love accounting done right. Your ambition is to be an exceptional Controller and build an exceptional accounting org and you see a growing finance function around you as a feature, not a threat
- Bias for action: You move fast, fix root causes instead of symptoms, and know when "80/20 and shipping" beats "perfect and late." Accounting should make the company faster and more confident, never slower
- Strongly preferred: Big Four or top regional firm foundation plus startup operating experience (one without the other is a yellow flag), indirect tax / sales tax / regulatory fee experience across many jurisdictions, experience with payment processors and marketplace money movement, and familiarity with modern accounting tools and automation
- We understand that there's no such thing as a 'perfect' candidate. We're looking for someone passionate, with grit and determination, who is excited to face the challenges of a rapidly growing startup. AirGarage is the type of company where you can grow exponentially, and we encourage you to apply to us even if you don't 100% match the candidate description
What the job involves
- As our Controller, you'll be the architect and owner of AirGarage's accounting function, the person who makes our numbers unimpeachable
- You'll lead our in-house accounting team, modernize our systems and processes, and build the financial foundation that a fast-scaling, capital-intensive, real-world business demands
- This is a builder's role, not a maintainer's role
- Money moves through our platform every day: collected from drivers, split with property owners, taxed by dozens of jurisdictions
- Our accounting has to keep pace with a business that gets more complex every quarter
- You'll take us from scrappy to scalable: converting our books to full accrual accounting, leading our migration from QuickBooks to a modern ERP, rebuilding the chart of accounts, tightening the close, and getting us audit-ready
- You'll report to our CEO today and to finance leadership as the team grows
- This is the cornerstone accounting seat at AirGarage: the person every future finance hire will be glad came before them
- If you love the craft of accounting, if clean books, tight controls, and a fast close are things you take genuine pride in, this is a rare chance to build the whole thing your way, at a company where the work actually matters to how the business is run and is critical to the end product delivered to customers
- Own the books, end to end: Lead the monthly close and continuously shorten it. Own revenue recognition, reconciliations, AP/AR, payroll coordination, and the integrity of every number that rolls up to the P&L, balance sheet, and cash flow statement
- Convert us to true accrual accounting: Design and implement proper GAAP revenue recognition for a transactional, multi-location, revenue-share business. Make the accounting reflect economic reality, not just cash movement
- Lead the ERP migration: Own our transition from QuickBooks to a modern ERP as your flagship first project: selection, implementation, data migration, integrations with our payments and data infrastructure, and change management with the team
- Rebuild the chart of accounts: Rationalize our account structure so that location-level, team-level, and corporate reporting all roll up cleanly and leadership can trust every cut of the data
- Connect accounting to our data systems: We have rich, real-time transaction data flowing through our platform and data warehouse. Make our accounting systems and our operational systems agree with each other so there is one source of truth, automated wherever possible
- Own indirect tax and compliance: Manage parking taxes, regulatory fees, and multi-jurisdiction sales/use tax compliance across a national footprint of locations. Build the processes that keep us clean as we enter new markets
- Get us audit-ready: Establish the controls, documentation, and processes to take AirGarage through its first financial statement audit and make every audit after that boring
- Level up the team: Manage, mentor, and develop our in-house accountants. Set the standard for what excellent looks like and build the processes that let a lean team punch above its weight
- Partner across the business: Work with Operations, Sales, and Product to make sure the way we bill, collect, split, and report revenue is accurate at the source, not patched up at close
- Support financial reporting: Deliver timely, accurate monthly financials and supporting schedules that leadership, the board, and investors can rely on without an asterisk
- WHY THIS ROLE MAY NOT BE FOR YOU:
- Please review this section before applying. We are sharing this information up front because we don't expect this job to be appealing to everybody and we do not want to waste your time if you are not on board with all of the following
- Being the Controller at a high growth startup means many different things, but there is one thing above all that it certainly means: the accuracy and integrity of our books are ultimately your responsibility to own. When something doesn't tie out, "that's how the system works" is not an answer; fixing the system is the job
- This will be a hard job. We work long hours at AirGarage, including nights and weekends, because we love what we do. We are growing fast but our Finance & Accounting team is lean, so every day you will have new challenges and too much on your plate, but you'll be expected to find a way to deliver anyways
- Below are some of the reasons you might not want this job:
- You want to inherit a finished machine. Our accounting worked for the company we were a year ago. Your job is to rebuild it for the company we're becoming while the monthly close keeps happening. You'll be writing the playbook while running the plays
- You're a maintainer, not a builder. If your best work has been keeping an already-excellent process running, this role will be uncomfortable. We need someone who has built the process itself
- You don't love complexity. We're a technology company that interacts with the physical world, not a SaaS business with a clean, predictable P&L. Money flows in from drivers, out to property owners, and through dozens of tax jurisdictions across hundreds of locations. That complexity is exactly why this role matters and why it's interesting
- You see this seat as a stepping stone to CFO. We're looking for someone who wants to be a world-class Controller and grow with a scaling accounting org, not someone waiting for a different job. As our finance leadership grows around this role, the right person will see that as backup arriving, not competition
- You expect to only direct. This is a hands-on role with a small team. If you prefer reviewing work to doing it, this won't feel right
- You need everything defined before you act. You'll frequently be the most senior accounting voice in the room. We need someone who notices the gap, proposes the fix, and drives it. We need an order maker, not an order taker
Our take
The parking industry has long adhered to traditional practices, relying on attendants and disparate payment and management systems. However, AirGarage is changing the landscape by providing software and management services to parking lot and garage owners. With its all-encompassing approach spanning from signage installation to payment handling and even parking enforcement.
One of AirGarage's key innovations is its revenue-sharing model, offering property owners a favorable 70-30 split and full transparency on earnings. This approach addresses the longstanding issue of parking managers reaping their share of revenue, leaving property owners with just a fraction of the income generated by their spaces. With over 300 locations across 38 US states under its management, AirGarage has become a pivotal player in reshaping the parking industry.
In 2025, the company closed its Series B funding round. That capital injection has gone towards scaling its platform and finetuning its data infrastructure. It not only caters to personal vehicle parking but also accommodates food trucks and cloud kitchens in need of parking and storage solutions. The future looks promising for AirGarage as it continues to modernize and streamline an industry ripe for technological transformation.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Led by a woman
Company
Company benefits
- Unlimited PTO - Enjoy travel or just take some time off -- whatever you need to relax and recharge
- Health, Dental, & Vision - Choose the benefits and health plan that best suits you and your family, we’ll cover the cost
- 401k - Plan and invest in your future with a 401K account via our partner, Guideline
- Parental Leave - We offer 12 weeks of fully paid Parental Leave to all parents to bond with a newly born, adopted, or fostered child
- Equity - Become an owner and earn equity by joining us in the early days of the company
- Remote Weeks - Take a trip with the team to live and work side by side together for a week in an interesting destination near our parking properties
Company HQ
The Castro, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Jonathon Barkl
(Co-Founder & CEO)Before co-founding AirGarage, they earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Physics and Economics from Arizona State University. During their time at University, they held a role of Research Scholar at NASA.
Scott Fitsimones
(Co-Founder & CTO)Alongside co-founding AirGarage, they are also the Founder of CityDAO. Previously held Engineering Internships at Facebook and CERN.
Chelsea Border
(Co-Founder & Chief Data Officer)Prior to co-founding AirGarage, they earned a Bachelor's Degree in Business Data Analytics from Arizona State University.
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