Sr Manager/Associate Director, Accounts Payable (AP) Operations

Company Description

Guardant Health is a leading precision oncology company focused on guarding wellness and giving every person more time free from cancer. Founded in 2012, Guardant is transforming patient care and accelerating new cancer therapies by providing critical insights into what drives disease through its advanced blood and tissue tests, real-world data and AI analytics. Guardant tests help improve outcomes across all stages of care, including screening to find cancer early, monitoring for recurrence in early-stage cancer, and treatment selection for patients with advanced cancer. For more information, visit guardanthealth.com and follow the company on LinkedIn, X (Twitter) and Facebook. 

About the Role:

Guardant Health is seeking an Sr Mgr/Associate Director, Accounts Payable Operations to lead the Accounts Payable and Travel & Expense functions across the organization. This position is responsible for overseeing day-to-day AP and T&E operations, global team performance, month-end close activities, and the accuracy, timeliness, and compliance of all payables and expense-related transactions.

The role serves as an operational and subject matter leader for AP and T&E, ensuring strong governance, scalable processes, and continuous improvement in a public company environment. The Sr Mgr/Associate Director will work closely with cross-functional partners, including Procurement, Accounting, IT, and Compliance, to drive efficiencies, support systems and automation initiatives, and prepare the organization for continued growth. This role may oversee both US-based and offshore teams as the organization continues to scale.

This position reports to the Senior Director, Assistant Controller & Treasurer, within the Corporate Accounting organization.

Primary Responsibilities:

Operational Leadership

• Own enterprise-wide AP and T&E operations, ensuring accuracy, timeliness, compliance, and scalability across domestic and international activities.

• Define and execute a multi-year operational roadmap for AP and T&E aligned to the Finance long-range plan.

• Serve as the senior escalation point for complex AP and T&E issues, balancing risk management with business enablement.

• Establish and monitor service levels, KPIs, and operational dashboards to drive performance and continuous improvement.

Organizational & People Leadership

• Lead, develop, and scale a multi-layered, globally distributed organization, including US and offshore teams.

• Build management depth and succession capability within AP and T&E functions.

• Drive consistent performance management, talent development, and engagement across teams.

• Promote a culture of accountability, ownership, and continuous improvement.

Process Optimization & Systems Enablement

• Own end-to-end AP and T&E processes, including invoice processing, expense reporting, corporate cards, disbursements, accruals, and compliance reporting.

• Partner with Finance Systems and IT to lead automation, integration, and optimization initiatives related to AP and T&E platforms (e.g., ERP, OCR, Concur).

• Identify and execute opportunities to reduce manual effort, improve cycle times, strengthen controls, and enhance employee and supplier experience.

• Ensure processes are well-documented, standardized where appropriate, and designed to scale.

Procurement & Cross-Functional Partnership

• Partner closely with Procurement and Supply Chain to improve upstream data quality, purchasing compliance, and invoice match rates.

• Collaborate on initiatives that drive operational efficiencies, reduce exceptions, and improve vendor experience.

• Act as a finance advisor to Procurement on AP-related impacts of policy, system, and process changes.

• Maintain strong partnerships with Legal, HR, IT, Tax, Compliance, and Accounting leadership.

Governance, Risk & Compliance

• Maintain strong internal controls across AP and T&E operations in accordance with GAAP, SOX, and company policies.

• Oversee regulated and high-risk areas, including physician spend tracking (Stark Law), corporate card governance, vendor master controls, and disbursement integrity.

• Lead AP and T&E-related audit activities and support internal and external audit requirements.

• Oversee statutory and compliance reporting related to AP, including 1099 and similar filings.

Financial Close, Reporting & Insights

• Own AP and T&E components of the monthly, quarterly, and annual close, including accruals, reconciliations, journal entries, and variance analysis.

• Provide leadership with actionable insights on trends, risks, capacity constraints, and improvement opportunities.

• Develop and maintain operational metrics aligned to finance and enterprise objectives.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Finance, Business, or a related field required; advanced degree and/or CPA preferred.

• 12+ years of progressive accounting or finance operations experience with deep Accounts Payable and Travel & Expense leadership exposure.

• 7+ years of people management experience, including leading managers and globally distributed or offshore teams.

• Strong experience in a public company environment with a solid understanding of SOX controls, audit requirements, and regulatory compliance.

• Extensive experience with large ERP environments (Oracle Fusion preferred) and expense management platforms (Concur required).

• Demonstrated success leading automation initiatives, systems implementations, and operational scaling efforts.

• Strong understanding of domestic and international AP and T&E operations, including compliance, accruals, and close processes.

• Proven ability to lead complex operations while balancing execution, risk management, and continuous improvement.

• Excellent communication and influencing skills with the ability to partner effectively across Finance, Compliance, Procurement, IT, and business stakeholders.

• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with sound judgment and a solutions-oriented mindset.

• Ability to operate independently, manage ambiguity, and drive results in a fast-paced, scaling environment.

Hybrid Work Model:This section is applicable to onsite employees who are eligible for hybrid work location as specified by management and related policies.  Guardant has defined days for in-person/onsite collaboration and work-from-home days for individual-focused time. All U.S. employees who live within 50 miles of a Guardant facility will be required to be onsite on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. We have found aligning our scheduled in-office days allows our teams to do the best work and creates the focused thinking time our innovative work requires. At Guardant, our work model has created flexibility for better work-life balance while keeping teams connected to advance our science for our patients.