What You'll Do:
What You'll Do
The Senior Tax Analyst II is a key contributor to Avalara Returns for Accountants (ARA), helping accounting firms deliver scalable, profitable, and low‑risk sales and use tax compliance services across their client portfolios. As ARA adoption expands among firms of varying size and complexity, this role ensures accurate, timely, multi‑jurisdictional filings, reduces compliance risk, and strengthens firm and end‑customer confidence in Avalara’s platform and services. This position directly protects client revenue, mitigates tax exposure, and advances Avalara’s AI‑first operational strategy by embedding automation and AI into daily compliance work.
How This Role Elevates Avalara
- Protects firm and end‑customer revenue through accurate, on‑time state and local sales and use tax filings.
- Reduces compliance risk by applying deep jurisdictional expertise and robust variance, exception, and notice management.
- Increases operational scale by designing and refining ARA workflows, data ingestion patterns, and automation that reduce manual effort.
- Enhances firm trust as a knowledgeable, proactive, senior point of contact for complex portfolios on ARA.
- Raises team capability by mentoring junior analysts and sharing documentation, process improvements, and AI best practices.
What Your Responsibilities Will Be:
What Your Responsibilities Will Be
- Own end‑to‑end preparation, review, and filing of complex, multi‑jurisdiction sales and use tax returns for assigned firm portfolios, achieving on‑time performance aligned to SLAs.
- Serve as primary compliance contact for assigned accounting firm clients using ARA (and, where applicable, Avalara Managed Returns for Accountants), handling advanced questions and escalations with minimal supervision.
- Analyze transactional and configuration data across AvaTax, ARA, and source systems to identify discrepancies, filing risks, and root causes before submission.
- Design and continuously improve ARA workflows (data ingestion, validation, approvals, filing, archiving) to reduce manual touches, rework, and notice volume.
- Perform and improve month‑end reconciliations and variance analysis to align reported liability with firm and client expectations.
- Engage state and local jurisdictions on behalf of clients to resolve complex compliance issues, notices, and exceptions.
- Participate in QA/UAT for new forms, filing automation, and ARA/Returns Console features; provide clear, risk‑based feedback from a compliance perspective.
- Collaborate cross‑functionally with Product, Engineering, Onboarding, Professional Services, and CX to strengthen compliance execution and the ARA experience.
- Mentor and coach junior analysts on complex jurisdictions, ARA best practices, customer communication, and AI‑enabled workflows.
12-Month Success Signals
- Independently manage a portfolio of complex, multi‑jurisdiction firm clients on ARA with minimal escalation.
- Achieve consistent 100% on‑time filing performance (or agreed SLA targets) for assigned portfolios.
- Maintain high accuracy with visible reductions in rework, variances, and notices relative to baseline.
- Implement at least one documented AI‑driven workflow or process improvement adopted by the broader team.
- Demonstrate strong working knowledge of AvaTax, Returns Console, and ARA, including data flows and key configuration patterns.
- Contribute meaningfully to at least one cross‑functional initiative (e.g., product feedback loop, automation pilot, training series) with clear, documented outcomes.
- Recognized by peers and leaders as a “go‑to” SME for ARA‑based compliance in at least one or two critical domains (e.g., specific jurisdictions, firm segment, workflow type).
What You'll Need to be Successful:
AI Expectations
- Leverage AI tools to accelerate data analysis, reconciliations, exception review, and return preparation while maintaining or improving quality.
- Use AI to draft clear, professional customer and jurisdiction communications, applying judgment and domain expertise before sending.
- Summarize complex issues, RCAs, and action plans with AI to improve clarity and reduce preparation time for internal and external stakeholders.
- Design and implement at least one AI‑enabled workflow enhancement (e.g., standardized prompts, variance review patterns, notice response templates) within the first 12 months.
- Quantify measurable AI impact such as reduced review hours, faster cycle times, or lower notice/rework rates.
- Apply AI responsibly in alignment with Avalara security, privacy, and compliance standards.
- Share AI best practices, examples, and lessons learned to elevate team productivity and capability.
Qualifications (Required)
- Bachelor of Science in Accounting, Finance, Tax, or related field from an accredited institution.
- 7+ years of multi‑jurisdiction indirect tax experience with a strong focus on sales and use tax return preparation and filing for US state and local jurisdictions.
- Proven experience preparing and filing complex, multi‑state portfolios, including exposure to high‑complexity jurisdictions and schedules.
- Advanced proficiency in Microsoft Excel (e.g., VLOOKUP/XLOOKUP, INDEX/MATCH, PivotTables, Power Pivot or similar) and demonstrated ability to analyze large, complex datasets.
- Experience working across multiple systems and tools (e.g., AvaTax, Returns Console/ARA, ERP or e‑commerce platforms, CSV/API extractors) with the ability to troubleshoot data and configuration issues end‑to‑end.
- Strong analytical, research, and problem‑solving skills; able to operate calmly and methodically under strict filing deadlines.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain complex tax and system topics in clear, simple language to non‑experts.
- Demonstrated ability to manage competing priorities and deadlines in a high‑volume environment while maintaining quality.
- Proven application of AI tools in a professional context to improve efficiency, accuracy, or customer experience (e.g., analysis, summarization, drafting, documentation).
Bar Raiser Expectations
- Demonstrate strong ownership and accountability for customer outcomes, deadlines, and quality.
- Exercise sound judgment in decisions that impact customers, scalability, and risk, using data and AI insights where appropriate.
- Act as a “go‑to” SME for critical ARA compliance functions or customers, leading through influence across teams.
- Leave processes, workflows, and documentation stronger than found by identifying issues, proposing solutions, and driving them to completion.
- Elevate peer performance through mentoring, knowledge sharing, constructive feedback, and modeling Avalara’s AI‑first, customer‑obsessed culture.
Avalara is an AI-first Company:
AI is embedded in our workflows, decision-making, and products. Success here requires embracing AI as an essential capability.
You’ll bring experience using AI and AI-related technologies, ready to thrive here.
You’ll apply AI every day to business challenges - improving efficiency, contributing solutions, and driving results for your team, our company, and our customers.
You’ll grow with AI by staying curious about new trends and best practices, and by sharing what you learn so others can benefit too.
How We'll Take Care of You:
Total Rewards
In addition to a great compensation package, paid time off, and paid parental leave, many Avalara employees are eligible for bonuses.
Health & Wellness
Benefits vary by location but generally include private medical, life, and disability insurance.
Inclusive culture and diversity
Avalara strongly supports diversity, equity, and inclusion, and is committed to integrating them into our business practices and our organizational culture. We also have a total of 8 employee-run resource groups, each with senior leadership and exec sponsorship.
What You Need To Know About Avalara:
We’re defining the relationship between tax and tech.
We’ve already built an industry-leading cloud compliance platform, processing over 54 billion customer API calls and over 6.6 million tax returns a year. Our growth is real - we're a billion dollar business - and we’re not slowing down until we’ve achieved our mission - to be part of every transaction in the world.
We’re bright, innovative, and disruptive, like the orange we love to wear. It captures our quirky spirit and optimistic mindset. It shows off the culture we’ve designed, that empowers our people to win. We’ve been different from day one. Join us, and your career will be too.
We’re An Equal Opportunity Employer
Supporting diversity and inclusion is a cornerstone of our company — we don’t want people to fit into our culture, but to enrich it. All qualified candidates will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, age, gender, national orientation, disability, sexual orientation, US Veteran status, or any other factor protected by law. If you require any reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, please let us know.
