Cost Accountant - Data Center Assets

About TensorWave Our mission is simple: deliver seamless, secure, reliable, and resilient AI compute at scale. We've built a versatile cloud platform that eliminates infrastructure barriers, empowering builders to focus on innovation instead of fighting their stack. Because breakthrough AI should move at the speed of ideas, not infrastructure. About the Role The Cost Accountant plays a foundational role in building and scaling our cost accounting function within a high-growth AI infrastructure startup. Unlike traditional manufacturing, this role focuses on the capitalization of high-value Data Center equipment—managing the financial lifecycle of hardware from procurement and landed cost, through server/GPU/hardware assembly, and ultimately into placed-in-service Fixed Assets. The ideal candidate brings a strong manufacturing or data center background and thrives in a startup environment, possessing the strategic vision to design processes from scratch and the tactical execution to manage the daily Construction-in-Progress (CIP) and component inventory. This role provides an opportunity to take ownership of a broad and increasingly important area of Finance & Accounting within a rapidly growing organization. The Cost Accountant will have meaningful exposure to financial reporting, accounting systems, internal controls, process automation, and cross-functional operations, while working in a flat organization that values ownership, accountability, and continuous improvement. What You’ll Do BOM and Inventory Management & Valuation: Manage item creation and associated accounting implications, ensuring master data accuracy across systems. Manage and review the Bill of Materials (BOM) for various server/rack configurations. Consolidate inventory and non-inventory items to streamline tracking, reporting, and operational efficiency. Oversee standard costing function, including monthly variance analysis, overhead allocation, and month-end reconciliations. Plan and execute physical counts, cycle counts, and perform inventory health assessments for impairment, obsolescence, or shrinkage. Reconcile inventory sub-ledgers to the general ledger on a regular basis to ensure system accuracy and balance sheet integrity. Fixed Asset Assembly & Material Flow Accounting: Track and account for high-value components (e.g., GPUs, network switches, servers, chassis) as they are assembled into full AI infrastructure racks. Manage the accounting impact of material flow as hardware moves across staging, assembly, deployment, and data center locations. Process assembly build transactions for the deployment of infrastructure hardware. Ensure accurate movement of costs from raw inventory into Construction-in-Progress (CIP) and ultimately capitalized as Fixed Assets upon being placed in service. Maintain perpetual inventory systems with monthly reconciliations. Review and update historical data as needed to align the accounting information systems to the data center ops systems. Landed Cost Management: Develop and maintain methodologies to accurately capture, allocate, and capitalize landed costs, including international freight, customs, tariffs, insurance, and handling fees for high-value hardware. Analyze and reconcile freight, tariff, customs and insurance invoices between subledgers and the general ledger. Process Engineering & Function Building: Architect the cost accounting function, including continuous iteration for process re-engineering. Participate in the design, documentation, and implementation of standard operating procedures (SOPs) for inventory tracking, assembly builds, and asset deployment. Reporting: Report on unit economics for all product offerings. Assist FP&A with forecasting, monthly financial reports, margin reporting, and break-even analysis. Develop meaningful metrics to support decision making. Operations & Engineering Alignment: Partner closely with Data Center Operations and Hardware Engineering to understand build s…

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