General Ledger Accountant, Payroll

About Etched
Etched is building hardware for frontier intelligence. We co-design chips, racks, software, and manufacturing to deliver best-in-class throughput and latency across both prefill and decode workloads. Our first products are heavily focused on inference. Backed by hundreds of millions from top-tier investors and staffed by leading engineers, Etched is redefining the infrastructure layer for the fastest growing industry in history.

Job Summary
We are hiring a General Ledger Accountant, Payroll to own critical elements of our financial close and ensure accurate accounting for payroll, benefits, and related compensation expenses. This role sits at the intersection of People Operations and Accounting, with direct ownership over payroll accruals, reconciliations, compliance, and internal controls.

You will partner closely with People Ops and Finance to ensure compensation activity is accurately recorded in the general ledger and supported by strong documentation and controls. You will own the payroll and benefits close process while helping design systems and workflows that scale as the company grows across entities and jurisdictions. This is a hands-on role requiring strong attention to detail, comfort operating in a fast-scaling environment, and a clear understanding of how payroll and benefits activity impacts financial reporting.

Key Responsibilities

• Own and lead the payroll and benefits accounting close process, ensuring accurate accruals, reconciliations, reporting, and strong internal controls over employee compensation and related expenses

• Reconcile payroll reports from third-party providers to the general ledger

• Prepare and post payroll journal entries, including accruals for bonuses, commissions, and PTO

• Reconcile benefits portal data to payroll deductions

• Review and reconcile carrier invoices to ensure accuracy of employer and employee contributions

• Investigate and resolve discrepancies between HRIS, payroll providers, benefits portals, and ERP

• Prepare payroll-related account reconciliations and maintain supporting documentation

• Maintain organized payroll and benefits documentation to support internal reviews and audits

• Ensure payroll changes, including new hires, terminations, compensation updates, and bonus payments, have proper approval and supporting documentation

• Maintain up-to-date process documentation for payroll and benefits workflows

• Support periodic internal control reviews and testing

• Maintain accurate configuration of earnings codes, deduction codes, tax settings, and pay groups within payroll systems

• Support integration between payroll platforms, HRIS, benefits portals, and other connected systems

• Support system setup for new states, entities, and pay frequencies as the company expands

• Standardize payroll processes to reduce manual intervention and improve efficiency

• Maintain payroll tax registrations across federal, state, and local jurisdictions

• Track and monitor payroll tax filings prepared by third-party payroll providers

• Coordinate state unemployment insurance registrations and rate updates

• Support new state registrations as the company expands into additional jurisdictions

• Assist with year-end reporting processes, including W-2 reconciliation and distribution oversight

• Coordinate responses to payroll tax notices from government agencies

• Coordinate with HR on new hires, terminations, compensation changes, and benefit elections to ensure payroll accuracy

• Review and validate HR-provided employee data prior to payroll processing

• Assist in resolving employee payroll and benefits inquiries in collaboration with HR

You may be a good fit if you have

• 3 to 5+ years of general accounting experience with ownership of payroll and benefits close processes

• Proficiency with ERP systems such as NetSuite, SAP, Oracle, or equivalent, and experience scaling systems in a high-growth environment

• Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Finance, or a related field

• Strong communication and relationship-building skills to work effectively across departments

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision packages with generous premium coverage

• $500 per month credit for waiving medical benefits

• Housing subsidy of $2k per month for those living within walking distance of the office

• Relocation support for those moving to San Jose (Santana Row)

• Various wellness benefits covering fitness, mental health, and more

• Daily lunch and dinner in our office

• Unlimited compute budget subject to ROI justification

How we’re different

Etched believes in the Bitter Lesson http://www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html. We are the first inference-focused frontier AI system. Our addressable market is the entirety of inference, unlike many of our competitors.

We are a fully in-person team in San Jose (Santana Row), and greatly value engineering skills. We do not have boundaries between engineering and research, and we expect all of our technical staff to contribute to both and work across disciplines as needed.