Accountant careers, from your first close to running the books
Accounting is a job about getting the numbers right on a deadline, month after month, and then explaining them to people who don't want to read a trial balance. The ladder is clearer than in most fields, and the skills you build at each step carry straight into the next one. Here's how it tends to work from the inside.
How the accounting ladder usually climbs
- 1
Staff Accountant
You own a set of accounts. That means bank reconciliations, accruals, prepaid schedules, fixed asset roll-forwards and the journal entries behind them. You'll spend close week in the ERP and in Excel, tying subledgers to the general ledger and chasing down the one vendor invoice nobody coded. Your reviewer will send things back. That's normal, and how fast you stop making the same mistake is what gets noticed.
- 2
Senior AccountantThis guide
You still prepare work, but now you review it too. You'll run pieces of the close calendar, write the flux commentary that explains why expenses jumped, and field auditor requests during fieldwork. Most people apply at this level with a few years of close experience, and it's the rung where a CPA license starts to open doors instead of just looking nice on a resume.
- 3
Accounting Manager
You run the close instead of doing it. You assign accounts, approve entries, own the audit relationship, and decide when a reconciliation is good enough to sign. A lot of the job becomes people: coaching a staff accountant through their first revenue cutoff, or telling the sales team their commission report is late again.
- 4
Controller
You own the financial statements and the controls around them. You'll sit with the CFO on board decks, pick the next ERP when the current one breaks, set policy on things like capitalization thresholds, and sign off before anything goes to lenders or auditors. At a public company or a regulated firm, a CPA license is usually expected here.
What a hiring manager checks before calling you back
When I screen accountant resumes, I'm scanning for proof you've done the actual work, not a list of adjectives. These are the words and tools I look for.
Public accounting or industry: pick with your eyes open
There are two front doors into this career, and they feel very different. Public accounting means working at a CPA firm on audit or tax engagements for many clients. You'll see how dozens of companies keep their books, you'll learn fast, and busy season will eat your evenings and weekends for a stretch every year. Firms also tend to support the CPA exam with study time and reimbursement, which matters more than people think.
Industry means working inside one company's finance team. You get one set of books, deeper context, and a steadier rhythm built around the monthly close. The tradeoff is you learn less breadth, and some teams are so small you'll be the accountant, the payroll person and the one who fixes the printer.
Plenty of people start in public, earn the license, and move to industry as a senior accountant or manager. That path is common enough that hiring managers expect it. Going the other way is harder but not rare.
A few things separate the accountants who move up quickly. They document their reconciliations so someone else could pick them up cold. They explain a variance in two sentences a sales VP can follow. And they learn the business, not just the ledger. If you know why the warehouse ships late in the last week of the quarter, you'll understand your inventory accrual better than anyone reading the numbers alone.
On licensing: the CPA is issued by each state board, and the education, exam and experience requirements differ by state. Check your own state board's rules before you plan around it. You don't need a CPA to work as an accountant, but without it, the path past manager at larger companies gets narrow.
What Accountant postings ask for
Hiring the most
- "ProSidian Consulting, LLC"36
- "Tyson Foods, Inc"17
- 360ITProfessionals17
- "Quality, Compassionate Care For All"5
- Aig5
Remote
10% of openings are fully remote.
Posted pay
$65,666 – $88,560
Typical range in the 16 of the newest 60 postings that list pay.
Questions people ask
Do I need a CPA license to get hired as an accountant?
No. Staff and senior accountant roles hire people without a license all the time, especially in industry. Where it starts to matter is audit work at a CPA firm, signing roles, and controller jobs at larger or public companies. Many postings say "CPA preferred," which usually means they'll still read your resume if the close experience is strong.
What's the difference between an accountant and a bookkeeper?
A bookkeeper records transactions: paying bills, entering invoices, keeping the ledger current. An accountant takes those records and makes them right and useful. That means accruals, reconciliations, adjusting entries, applying GAAP and producing statements someone can rely on. On small teams the line blurs, but interviewers will ask which side you've actually worked.
Which software should I learn first?
Get very good at Excel before anything else. Pivot tables, lookups and clean, traceable formulas show up in every interview test I've given. After that, learn whatever ERP your target employers use. NetSuite and QuickBooks are common at smaller companies, and SAP or Oracle show up at larger ones. Close tools like BlackLine or FloQast are easy to pick up once you understand reconciliations.
How do I move from staff to senior accountant?
Own your accounts so fully that your reviewer stops finding things. Then start taking work off your manager's plate, like drafting flux commentary or handling a piece of the audit request list. When you can show you've reviewed someone else's work and run part of the close, you're ready to apply for senior roles, inside your company or out.