Careers at Ballast
Working at Ballast means joining a team obsessed with driving change and making an impact for our clients.
Your growth & Development
Extensive Training
We take the training and development of our team very seriously and we invest heavily to ensure that all of our teammates are provided the resources and support to learn the technical skills and leadership behaviors necessary to succeed. Training at Ballast includes a combination of self-guided study, side-car experiences with other teammates, direct work experience, and lessons and case work taught by senior members of our team.
We believe that it is our job to provide a fertile ground for growth and development and we are committed to providing the right resources in the right form at the right time in order to train and develop our teammates.
Coaching & Mentorship
Our company is organized into internal teams. Each team is a small group of analysts and engagement managers, led by a Team Lead. This structure provides the framework for coaching and mentorship.
Team Leads function as conduits with leadership and advocates for their team members. This ensures that no one gets lost within our organization.
We think of performance and development across two categories - technical skills and leadership behaviors. Every role at Ballast has a carefully crafted and openly broadcast set of expectations for both categories. Every member of our team has an open dialogue with their Team Leads on all aspects of their performance of technical skills and leadership behaviors.
We do not ‘staff’ our teammates on engagements and no team member is ever on an island. We build teams of people that work together on each and every client and engagement. This provides for a more collaborative work environment for our team.
Every team member is placed on a variety of client teams, providing for an extensive and diverse work experience. We rotate team members from client teams after nine-to-eighteen months to provide for more exposure and more experience with more client types, industries, and other teammates.
Our leadership team is obsessed with building Ballast into the most fertile ground possible for your development.
Client Teams
Roles
Analyst
Analysts work on a variety of accounting and finance related tasks across several clients at any time. The mix of accounting and finance related tasks changes over the course of an analyst’s development at Ballast. The more advanced an analyst becomes in capability, the more advanced the work provided. Most analysts at Ballast are working towards becoming Engagement Managers.
Engagement Manager
Engagement Managers are fundamentally responsible for the workflow at Ballast. Each Engagement Manager (EM) at Ballast works on four to six clients at a time. Clients are rotated every nine-to-eighteen months at the direction of the leadership team to ensure that EMs are gaining depth and breadth of experience. This includes consideration of client life stage, industry, systems, team size, and client team coverage.
Relationship Manager
Relationship Managers (RM) have a deep set of required functions for their clients, including ensuring alignment between the EM’s tasks with client needs, guiding company strategy, and filling any advanced EM functions not filled by the EM on each client.
RMs are expected to cover between twelve to fifteen clients at any time.
Positions
Analysts
Our Analysts operate within the process managed by our Associates. Analysts perform a blend of accounting and finance work. Analysts have exposure to anywhere from 5 - 10 clients at any given time. We invest heavily in comprehensive training and development of our analysts in order to prepare them for eventual Associate roles.
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Qualifications: Bachelor’s degree in finance or accounting
Currently Hiring
Associates
Associates are Engagement Managers responsible for managing client engagements with higher degrees of supervision from a relationship manager. Core responsibilities of an Associate EM are:
Ensure consistent delivery of Ballast’s standard process for our clients
Manage deadlines to ensure delivery is timely
Own workflows of analyst and client-resources to ensure deadlines can be managed and met
The Associate role provides the opportunity to learn how to deliver Ballast's core services and manage a client in a standard enterprise engagement. Associates at-level are responsible for managing 4 clients at-level.
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Qualifications: Bachelor’s degree in finance or accounting, minimum 2+ years relevant work experience (audit/tax/finance/consulting)
Currently Hiring
Senior Associates
The Senior Associate role is a mid-level Engagement Manager focused on similar engagement types, while managing a larger number of clients (5 at-level). Additionally, Senior Associates skillfully handle clients’ advanced engagement challenges, requiring minimal supervision. In addition to the core responsibilities of an Associate, Senior Associates are capable of independently managing:
Quality control and assurance of our process (identifying and solving accounting and finance issues that arise in the monthly close inhibiting high-quality delivery of our process)
Solving complex finance and accounting problems, and designing and implementing process improvements to our client engagements.
Senior Associates have high degrees of mastery in finance and accounting, and are given the opportunity to learn complex problem solving, client consulting/advisory skills and client management. The Senior Associate role also begins to guide and train Analysts and Associates.
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Qualifications: Bachelor’s degree in finance or accounting, minimum 4+ years relevant work experience (audit/tax/finance/consulting)
Currently Hiring
Senior Consultants
The Senior Consultant role is a senior Engagement Manager focused on more complex and more advanced client engagements. The Senior Consultant role engages in less accounting than the Associate or Senior Associate roles, while taking on more consulting work (e.g. deeper dive in data analytics, uncovering opportunities for process and operational improvements, vendor negotiations, etc.). Senior consultants manage 6 clients at-level with minimal supervision from the client Relationship Manager.
Senior Consultants provide thought-leadership, mentorship and training to junior team members given their expertise, giving them opportunities to grow as people-managers.
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Qualifications: Bachelor’s degree in finance or accounting, minimum 6+ years relevant work experience (audit/tax/finance/consulting)
Currently Hiring
Vice Presidents
The Vice President (VP) role is the most senior Engagement Manager role. VP’s may also begin to manage clients in the Relationship Manager role. This role engages in more consulting work and less day-to-day accounting and finance than the Senior Consultant role. The VP role includes management of Analysts and some Associates, Seniors, and Consultants. Number of clients managed can depend on people management responsibilities, ranging from 4-6 clients at-level.
VP’s are given the opportunity to learn the skills necessary to become an effective Relationship Manager.
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Qualifications: Bachelor’s degree in finance or accounting, minimum 9+ years relevant work experience (audit/tax/finance/consulting)
Currently Hiring
Directors / Partners
Directors and Partners are Relationship Managers ultimately responsible for the firm-client relationship. Relationship Managers provide strategic guidance and industry expertise to clients, as well as supervision of Engagement Managers. Directors and Partners are responsible for developing process improvements, business development, recruiting, and training. Directors and Partners are subject-matter-experts and may be given opportunities to serve as officers of the firm.
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Qualifications: Bachelor’s degree in finance or accounting, minimum 12+ years relevant work experience (preferable in audit/assurance or tax)