Plant Controller at Vulcan Elements (Research Triangle Park, NC)Plant Controller

Vulcan Elements is manufacturing American rare-earth permanent magnets for a secure, resilient future. With a focus on national security and economic resiliency, we serve critical industries such as defense, aerospace, and automotive powering a high-technology future. Vulcan Elements is building a team of ambitious professionals committed to Mission Focus, Technical Excellence and Integrity. We are seeking a dedicated Plant Controller to join our dynamic and growing team as we scale our operations.

Position Overview: The Plant Controller will own site-level financial leadership at our commercial manufacturing facility in Benson, NC. This role is the financial backbone of plant operations — partnering daily with finance and operations leadership while reporting into the corporate finance organization.

This is a hands-on role in a fast-moving environment. You'll build cost accounting infrastructure, stand up controls, and drive financial discipline in a facility that will scale rapidly. You will play a key role in ensuring the company’s financial health as we expand our domestic manufacturing capabilities and support critical industries with innovative rare-earth permanent magnet technology.

Key Responsibilities:

• Own daily and monthly plant financial results and KPIs, including reporting to plant and corporate leadership.
• Serve as the site finance lead for ERP and MES initiatives, including data integrity between production systems and the general ledger.
• Collaborate with FP&A to oversee all aspects of inventory costing and management ensuring accurate financial reporting.
• Partner with operations and manufacturing engineering to translate MES/shop-floor data into accurate costing, yield, and other reporting.
• Manage plant-level fixed asset accounting and reporting.
• Own the site-level month-end close, including inventory, fixed assets, accruals, and intercompany activity, on a corporate close calendar.
• Design, document, and operate site-level internal controls over inventory, costing, fixed assets, and procurement; support SOX-readiness and external audit requests.
• Build and develop a site finance/cost accounting team as the plant scales.

Responsibilities and tasks outlined are not exhaustive and may change as determined by the needs of the business.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in accounting, finance, or a related field.
• 7–10+ years of progressive accounting/finance experience, including significant time in a plant controller, cost accounting manager, or similar site-level manufacturing finance role.
• Deep experience in manufacturing, industrial or technology environments.
• Experience in a high-growth or scaling enterprise — comfort building processes, not just running them.
• Strong US GAAP knowledge in areas relevant to manufacturing and fixed assets (ASC 330 Inventory, ASC 360 Fixed Assets).
• Excellent analytical skills, attention to detail, and ability to work in a fast-paced environment.
• Proven leadership and communication skills with the ability to collaborate across departments.
• Experience with government contracting is a plus.

Must be a U.S. Person due to required access to U.S. export-controlled information or facilities.