Cost Accounting Analyst
Job Description
Location: Irvine, CA (On-site)
Type: Contract (approx. 3–4 months), 40 hrs/week
Department: Accounting / Manufacturing Finance
Job Summary
The Cost Accountant supports the cost accounting team with day-to-day manufacturing finance activities, including inventory and cost-of-goods analysis, variance reporting, and month-end close support. This role has an emphasis on job costing, labor/overhead support, standard cost maintenance assistance, and inventory reconciliations, while helping ensure key inventory/manufacturing controls are completed accurately and on time.
Duties & Responsibilities
- Assist with month-end close activities for cost accounting, including support for journal entries and account reconciliations.
- Help prepare and analyze product costs, manufacturing variances, and other COGS-related reporting.
- Support standard cost updates and maintain cost data (BOM/routings and related cost inputs) in partnership with operations/manufacturing teams.
- Assist with labor and overhead rate support (basic calculations, data pulls, trend reporting).
- Support inventory reconciliations (including intercompany inventory/profit where applicable).
- Assist with cycle counts and physical inventories (coordination support, variance research, documentation).
- Support warranty and E&O (excess & obsolete) analysis and reporting.
- Pull and analyze data from the ERP/accounting system to support cost-of-goods reporting and ad hoc requests.
- Help maintain documentation for inventory/manufacturing SOX controls and support audit requests as needed.
- Participate in process improvement efforts to streamline close and reporting activities.
- Perform other projects as assigned.
Minimum Qualifications
- 4+ years of accounting experience with exposure to cost accounting (manufacturing environment strongly preferred).
- Strong Excel skills (pivot tables, lookups; comfort working with large data sets).
- Working knowledge of inventory, COGS, and basic variance analysis concepts.
- High attention to detail; ability to manage multiple priorities and deadlines.
- Strong written and verbal communication; comfortable partnering with operations/manufacturing stakeholders.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience in a high-volume manufacturing environment.
- Exposure to standard costing, BOM/routings, or labor/overhead concepts.
- Experience with ERP systems (any major ERP is fine—SAP/Oracle/NetSuite/etc.).
- Experience in a medical device / regulated / lot-controlled environment.
- Spanish (written/spoken) a plus.
Education
- Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Finance, or Business (or equivalent experience).
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Meet Your Recruiter
Nina McCann
On-Site Manager
A native to Orange County, Nina’s staffing career began in 2006 placing quality engineering candidates with distinguished companies as a successful recruiter and client manager. Nina specializes in recruiting for mechanical and electrical engineers in all industries from aerospace, medical device and manufacturing. She understands the engineering programs and importance of matching specific technical skills for position success. Her strong connections within the industry have been vital in her success. Nina’s excitement in placing engineers is due to the direct impact the products have on people’s lives: Everything we touch has been engineered in one form or another. She currently works as an on-site manager at a prominent medical device company.
Outside of work, Nina has been a dedicated volunteer to local nonprofit organizations for the past 15 years. She also enjoys being outdoors, hiking and spending time with her three children.