Finance & Operations Associate

Elections are the foundation of democracy, and democracy depends on elections that are broadly trusted. Over the last 20 years, public trust in the technology that powers our elections has dropped significantly. With this distrust, democracy itself is at stake. VotingWorks is a non-partisan not-for-profit building election technology that every American can trust.

VotingWorks is entering a pivotal growth phase where we’re scaling up to become a national contender with deployments of voting machines in up to 10 states by 2028. We are building out our FinOps team to support this growth and ensure we scale smoothly.

The Finance & Operations Associate will work under the Head of Operations to ensure seamless planning, logistics, and execution of Procurement and Inventory Management, as well as support the Director of Accounting with necessary costing and reconciliation related to inventory. You will ensure we have all the necessary components on hand, on time in order to complete our builds, as well as track those components and their costs from the initial quote through the Cost of Goods Sold reconciliation after the builds are completed.

The ideal candidate will have 5+ years of experience in finance and/or accounting with an interest in, or direct experience with, procurement, purchasing, and supply chain operations. Strong understanding of foundational accounting concepts and Excel skills are necessary. Previous experience managing purchase orders, vendor relationships, sourcing, or inventory management is highly valued.

This is a startup role. If you prefer a highly structured environment with clearly defined processes and minimal ambiguity, this probably isn't the right fit, and that's okay. But if you're someone who gets energized by building processes from scratch, pivoting when priorities shift, and figuring things out without a playbook, we want to hear from you. VotingWorks is at a stage where the person in this role will have a real impact on how our operations and financial infrastructure scales, as well as opportunity for growth.

To succeed here, you'll need to be extremely organized, detail-oriented, a strong written communicator, and comfortable working autonomously. Most of our internal communication happens over Slack, and vendor relationships are managed almost entirely through email, so the ability to communicate clearly and professionally in writing isn't a nice-to-have, it's essential.

To begin, your responsibilities will include:

Procurement & Inventory Planning

• Track and manage the inventory needed to build our machines, partnering with our Production, Product, and Hardware teams as needed. Ensure we have the right parts, at the right time, for all build cycles. 
• Own the end-to-end purchase order (PO) process: creating, issuing, tracking, and reconciling POs across vendors and internal teams. Note we currently use Odoo for procurement, any experience with this system is a plus.
• Build procurement plans that meet customer demands while optimizing cash flow as much as possible.
• Negotiate pricing, proactively resolve delays, maintain accurate vendor records,and identify opportunities to streamline purchasing workflows and build scalable procurement processes as the organization grows.

Cost Accounting 

• Support Director of Accounting with the following:
  • Inventory reconciliation between our inventory management system and accounting system each month, ensuring that all material, shipping, and duty/tariff costs are accurately captured in financial reporting.
  • Calculate Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) at the end of each build. Partner with our Production team to accurately track consumption and waste during all builds.  

Accounts Payable / Accounts Receivable

• Support the Director of Accounting in managing day-to-day AP and AR activities, ensuring accuracy and timeliness across all transactions.
  • Process vendor invoices, verify against POs and receipts, and coordinate approvals to ensure on-time payment.
  • Monitor outstanding receivables and follow up on overdue customer invoices.
  • Assist with month-end close by reconciling AP and AR balances.
  • Serve as a point of contact for vendor and customer billing inquiries, resolving issues quickly and professionally.

We are a small, tight-knit team. We strive to be a flat organization when it comes to ideas and input. We believe in good management, even as a small organization, so that every VotingWorks team member gets mentorship, feedback, and an opportunity for personal growth. We strive to be both confident in the skills and knowledge we each bring and humble in our interactions with each other and other stakeholders in the election space.

We’ve been thinking about the problems and rough edges of our democracy for a while – some of us for our whole career, others for “only” a few years. We’ve decided that talking about it isn’t enough - we must do something. We’re building actual solutions that solve real problems. If that sounds exciting, we hope you’ll consider joining our team.

We’re a mostly distributed organization, with team members working from home in nine different states. For many of our roles, you can live anywhere you want. For some of our roles, we need you in specific geographies. If there’s a geographical requirement, it’s never “just to be in the same room as the rest of the team,'' it’s for very clear reasons like customer need or working on physical hardware together.

This position can be anywhere in the continental US. Occasional travel (1 - 4 times/year) is expected.

We offer a flexible work schedule and we're on board with schedule flexibility: many team members have kids, pets, family members they care for, extensive hobbies, and other personal commitments that don’t always conform to a strict 9-5 schedule. We get that, and we think we’re a better organization if we adapt to that. We work hard, we just don’t work hard on a strict schedule. With flexibility comes responsibility: you should be comfortable with significant autonomous work. And of course, in this role, you do need to be often available during times where customers can reasonably expect demos, calls.

We never discriminate on the basis of sex, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, race, ethnicity, background, ability/disability or really anything that isn’t about your actual skills.

We strive to go beyond that: we want to build a diverse organization that truly represents the people of the United States of America. We especially want to encourage women and members of under-represented groups to apply. You’ll always be judged on your skills and contributions, and we know that a more diverse team in all dimensions is a better team.