How to become an accountant

What it pays

This range uses U.S. posted salaries blended with the OEWS benchmark, with 270 stated salaries. See the accountant salary page for seniority and market detail.

What employers ask for

The skills these postings name most often, and the gates they state.

Accounting knowledge itself is the baseline (60% of postings name it outright), but SAP is the real gatekeeper for anyone targeting a mid-size or larger company, showing up in 41% of listings. Excel remains non-negotiable underneath everything, used for reconciliation work, variance analysis, and the pivot tables that turn a general ledger export into something a controller can read in five minutes. Financial modeling and data analysis show up in a smaller but growing share of postings, suggesting the role is drifting toward analysis and away from pure transaction processing as automation absorbs more of the routine entry work.

How to become an accountant

The degree is the real gate here: 184 postings require one against only 33 that merely prefer it and 8 that waive it outright, so most employers want an accounting or finance degree in hand before they'll talk to you, though the waived postings tend to accept a strong bookkeeping or AP/AR track record instead. The CPA is a separate decision, not a universal requirement: it needs 150 semester hours (more than a standard bachelor's, which pushes many candidates into a fifth year or a master's), the four-part Uniform CPA Exam, and 1 to 2 years of supervised experience, the whole thing running 1 to 3 years alongside a job. It matters for public accounting and for signing off on audits; most corporate accounting and FP&A roles never ask for it. The median candidate hired has 4 years of experience, and the common stall point is the exam itself, people pass two sections, get busy during a close season, and let the clock run on the rest. If you're not aiming at public accounting or audit sign-off, skip the CPA path and put that time into SAP and reconciliation work instead.

1. 01Get an accounting or finance degreeThis is the hard requirement in 184 of the postings measured here, versus 33 that merely prefer it. A standard four-year bachelor's in accounting or finance covers it; if you're aiming at the CPA later, check your state's 150-hour rule now, since it usually means adding a fifth year or a master's.
2. 02Take an entry-level accounting or AP/AR roleLook for staff accountant, accounts payable, or bookkeeping openings, since these build the reconciliation instincts that show up in 24% of postings as a named requirement. Expect 1 to 2 years here before you're trusted with a full account reconciliation on your own.
3. 03Get fluent in SAP and ExcelSAP appears in 41% of postings and Excel in 35%, and neither is optional if you're targeting a mid-size or larger employer. Build this on the job or through a short course, aiming for comfort with journal entries, pivot tables, and variance analysis within your first year.
4. 04Decide if you're pursuing the CPAIf public accounting or audit sign-off is the goal, start the 150-hour education requirement and register for the four-part Uniform CPA Exam. Budget 1 to 3 years total alongside full-time work, and plan to schedule exam sections around, not during, close season.
5. 05Move into senior or controller-track rolesAfter roughly 4 years (the median experience level in current postings), start applying for senior accountant or financial controller openings, which show an 87% skill match to the accountant role. This is where ownership of a full close cycle, not just a set of accounts, becomes the expectation.

How the career progresses

The jump from staff accountant to senior accountant is mostly about ownership: you stop reconciling accounts someone assigns you and start owning a full set of entities or a full close cycle end to end. The step after that, into controller, changes what you're accountable for entirely, from correct numbers to numbers a CFO and auditors will trust without re-checking, and it usually asks for the reconciliation and audit exposure this role already builds. The ladder forks around the 5 to 8 year mark: one path goes into management, owning a close process and a team; the other stays technical and moves toward audit, forensic accounting, or specialized reporting where the appeal is the puzzle itself, not the org chart.

What it offers

Benefits these postings state, most common first. Silence means the employer said nothing, not that the benefit is missing.

Who already has relevant skills

Financial controllers move into this role at a 57% match and bring the close process and reconciliation discipline directly with them, usually stepping sideways rather than up. Financial analysts (55% match) carry the Excel and forecasting skills but often need to build up transactional-level reconciliation experience they didn't need in an analyst seat. Bookkeepers (53% match) already know the ledger cold and the ledger software; what they're missing is usually the degree requirement itself, which shows up as the main blocker in postings, not a skills gap. Auditors match at only 19%, since audit trains you to review someone else's books, not build your own.

• Financial Controller → Accountant57%already covered
• Financial Analyst → Accountant55%already covered
• Bookkeeper → Accountant53%already covered
• Forensic Accountant → Accountant44%already covered
• Auditor → Accountant19%already covered

Where it leads

The measured moves out of accountant, ranked by how much of the destination a typical profile already covers. The full set is on alternative careers for accountants.

• Accountant → Financial Controller87%$80k–$120k
• Accountant → Bookkeeper73%$40k–$50k
• Accountant → Auditor44%$40k–$85k
• Accountant → Financial Analyst48%$60k–$110k
• Accountant → Forensic Accountant32%$80k–$120k
• Accountant → Business Analyst23%$75k–$140k

Who this career tends to suit

People who come alive here are the ones who get a genuine satisfaction from a number that finally ties out, who don't feel the reconciliation as a chore but as a small, solvable mystery each time. It suits someone who can hold five open threads at once during close week without losing track of which vendor invoice was missing a PO number. People who leave tend to be the ones who wanted more variety day to day or wanted to build something rather than verify it; they often move toward financial analysis or business analyst roles where the output is a recommendation, not a reconciled balance. If the idea of the same close cycle every month sounds monotonous rather than steady, this isn't the role that will surprise you into liking it.

One common misconception

People assume accounting is mostly tax season, but for the large majority of these postings tax is a minor or absent part of the job; the work is closer to reconciliation, reporting, and audit support running year-round with month-end as the real recurring pressure point. Another one: that a CPA is required to have this job title at all. It's required to sign off on audits or work in public accounting, but most of the corporate roles in these postings, including senior ones, run on the degree and experience alone.

What listings cannot tell you

None of this shows how much of the job is chasing down one person in another department who hasn't sent the documentation you need to close a line, which eats more real time than any task on a job description. It also can't show which companies run a calm, well-organized close and which ones turn every month-end into a fire drill, and that difference matters more to daily life than almost anything else in the posting.

Where the work sits

• Public accounting firmsAudit and tax work in cycles tied to client fiscal years and filing deadlines; this is where the CPA path pays off directly and where hours swing hardest around busy season.
• Corporate finance departmentsIn-house accounting for a single company, closer to steady month-end rhythms than to client deadlines, and the path most FP&A and controller roles come from.
• Manufacturing and consumer goodsCost accounting and inventory reconciliation dominate here; SAP is almost always in play given the postings measured, since these companies run large ERP systems to track physical inventory.
• Financial services and bankingHeavier on regulatory reporting and reconciliation volume, often with tighter controls and more formal sign-off chains than a standard corporate accounting seat.

Where to go deep

• Financial controllershipIt's the most common next step from this role (87% match) and the one with the clearest salary jump, since it puts you in charge of the close process rather than a piece of it.
• Forensic accountingA smaller, specialized track (32% match from this role) for people who like investigation more than routine reconciliation; demand comes from firms handling fraud investigation and litigation support, not standard corporate accounting.
• SAP-focused accountingGiven that 41% of postings already name SAP directly, deep fluency in a specific ERP module (FI/CO especially) makes you disproportionately hireable at any company running that system, which is most large manufacturers and multinationals.

Where it hires

• Switzerland243
• United States121
• Germany56
• CR20
• United Kingdom14
• Mexico8

Open accountant roles

Live openings tagged to this occupation, from company career pages and remote boards. Apply at the source.

• Senior Accountant – Fixed Assets Accounting at ServiceNowBangalore, IN1d agoApply
• Senior Accountant (m/w/d) (Voll- oder Teilzeit) at SnkeMünchen1d agoApply
• CSenior Accountant at Center for Action and ContemplationUnited States · Remote$70k–$87k1d agoApply
• BAccountant at Bureau of the Fiscal ServiceParkersburg, West Virginia$62k–$116k1d agoApply
• EAccountant at Employment and Training AdministrationSan Francisco, California$133k–$173k1d agoApply
• WAccountant at Washington Headquarters ServicesAlexandria, Virginia$102k–$158k1d agoApply