Share-Based Payment Accounting Architecture Director — Enterprise Software

The mandate

Years of hiring, tender offers, founder arrangements and acquisition retention have created an award estate whose legal documents, cap-table records, payroll treatment and accounting classifications no longer agree consistently. Performance conditions are tracked outside the close, modifications reach Finance late, and acquired awards carry poorly evidenced allocation between purchase consideration and post-combination service. Audit sampling is now expanding faster than management can answer.

The principal deliverable is a Share-Based Payment Accounting Architecture and Award Evidence Vault. It will classify award families, map authoritative terms, establish service and performance-condition decisions, control modification and settlement events, link valuation inputs, reconcile expense and tax effects, and support EPS and compensation disclosures. Every design must assign a durable internal owner rather than a consultant-dependent calculation.

Milestone one at week three completes population reconciliation and consequence-based segmentation. Milestone two at week seven delivers policy decision trees and event controls. A shadow close and sample reperformance complete milestone three in week twelve. Week seventeen closes the engagement with accepted evidence packs, a control catalogue, exception register, trained owners and one unannounced modification simulation.

Acceptance requires Equity Administration and Finance to reconcile the full grant population to legal approvals and the general ledger; Internal Controls to reperform selected classification, attribution and disclosure cases; and Tax to explain jurisdictional differences. The Chief Accounting Officer signs only after client staff resolve twelve unseen award changes through the designed route without consultant-authored conclusions.

The client will provide award plans, grant agreements, cap-table and administration extracts, compensation approvals, payroll and tax files, acquisition agreements, valuations, ledger detail, prior accounting papers, disclosures, control narratives and audit findings. Management owns accounting conclusions and estimates. Legal advice, compensation design, valuation opinions, tax advice, payroll remediation and system procurement are excluded.

Why this is external work

Equity Administration can operate grants and Technical Accounting can research standards, yet neither has capacity to reconstruct the historic population while designing a sustainable event architecture. A bounded external team can join legal, valuation and ledger evidence without advising the compensation committee or replacing management’s accounting judgement.

What you will own

• Reconcile grants, cancellations, exercises, settlements and modifications across approvals, agreements, administrator records and ledgers.
• Segment employee, founder, director, contractor and acquired awards by classification, service conditions and accounting consequence.
• Build decision routes for performance conditions, market conditions, graded vesting, forfeitures, modifications and tender participation.
• Link approved valuation inputs, attribution schedules, payroll tax, deferred tax, EPS and disclosure evidence to each award family.
• Design cut-off, completeness, review, exception, journal, sub-certification and retention controls around award lifecycle events.
• Exercise an acquisition retention change, founder modification, performance reset, cross-border transfer and cash settlement.
• Transfer the evidence vault and control catalogue after client owners complete a shadow close and unseen case set.

Candidate qualifications

• Led share-based payment accounting for a public software, technology or other equity-intensive multinational issuer.
• Reconciled fragmented award populations across legal approvals, cap tables, third-party administration, payroll and financial ledgers.
• Resolved classification, performance-condition, modification, settlement and acquired-award questions under rigorous audit examination.
• Connected award expense with valuation evidence, payroll tax, deferred tax, diluted EPS and compensation disclosure controls.
• Maintained clear boundaries among accounting, legal advice, valuation opinion, compensation design and tax responsibility.
• Delivered award-accounting operating models that internal administrators and controllership teams sustained after project completion.

Non-negotiables

• The named director must lead San Francisco workshops and the final unseen modification acceptance exercise.
• Demonstrated public-company accounting for complex equity awards is required; equity administration alone does not qualify.
• No current relationship may involve the issuer’s compensation adviser, valuation specialist, equity administrator or external auditor.
• Management retains all accounting estimates and conclusions; legal, valuation, tax and compensation advice remain excluded.

1. 49 words maximum. Describe an award modification whose legal label concealed a different accounting consequence.
2. 49 words maximum. How did you reconcile acquired awards between consideration transferred and post-combination expense?
3. 49 words maximum. Which unseen award event best proves that client owners understand the architecture?