Financial Operations

Financial Operations @ Clay

Clay is looking for a Financial Operations Lead to join our growing Finance & Accounting team. This role will own the day-to-day financial operations that keep the business running smoothly, with a primary focus on accounts payable, employee spend, T&E, vendor management, and cash operations.

You’ll be responsible for building scalable processes and infrastructure across these areas as Clay continues to grow. This includes managing the full AP and expense lifecycle, partnering closely with employees and vendors, improving workflows and controls, and helping ensure our financial operations can scale with the business.

This is a great opportunity for someone who enjoys being hands-on, building from the ground up, and improving processes in a fast-moving environment. You’ll work closely with the broader Accounting, Finance, People, and Operations teams and have significant ownership over how financial operations evolve at Clay.

This role can be in our NYC or SF office with a hybrid set up.

What You'll Do

Accounts Payable & Vendor Operations

• Own the full AP lifecycle, including invoice intake, coding, approval routing, and timely payment processing
• Manage vendor onboarding, maintenance, and documentation
• Partner with vendors and internal stakeholders to resolve invoice and payment issues
• Maintain accurate AP records and ensure processes are audit-ready
• Reconcile AP activity to the general ledger and investigate discrepancies
• Identify opportunities to automate and improve AP workflows as the company scales

T&E & Employee Spend

• Own the day-to-day administration of corporate cards, employee expenses, and T&E
• Review and approve employee expenses for compliance with company policies
• Manage expense reimbursements and resolve employee questions or issues
• Partner with employees across the organization to ensure a smooth, responsive expense experience
• Help develop and improve spend policies, approval workflows, and controls
• Monitor employee and corporate spend and identify opportunities to improve visibility and efficiency

Cash & Financial Operations

• Monitor daily cash activity and perform bank reconciliations across entities and currencies
• Support domestic and international payments, wires, and banking operations
• Maintain cash forecasting inputs and communicate potential liquidity or funding needs
• Ensure appropriate controls and segregation of duties around cash disbursements
• Support month-end close activities related to AP, expenses, cash, and other operational accounting areas

Process & Systems

• Build and document scalable financial operations processes as Clay continues to grow
• Evaluate and implement improvements across finance systems, workflows, and automation
• Partner with Accounting, Finance, People, and other cross-functional teams to improve the employee and vendor experience
• Help establish strong operational controls and processes that can scale with a rapidly growing company

What You'll Bring

• 6+ years of relevant accounting, AP, T&E, or financial operations experience, ideally within a high-growth technology or startup environment
• Bachelor's degree in Accounting, Finance, or a related field
• Strong working knowledge of AP, employee expenses/T&E, corporate cards, cash operations, and financial reconciliations
• Experience owning or significantly improving financial operations processes
• Highly organized with excellent attention to detail and follow-through
• Comfortable operating in a fast-paced environment with evolving systems, processes, and priorities
• Strong communication skills and a service-oriented mindset when working with employees, vendors, and cross-functional partners
• Experience with modern finance tools such as NetSuite, Ramp, Rippling, Rillet, Brex, or similar is a plus
• Experience working with multiple entities, currencies, or international payments is a plus
• CPA or progress toward CPA is a plus, but not required