---
title: 'Senior Assurance Associate - Audit Innovation at Nace AI'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-assurance-associate-audit-innovation-nace-ai-palo-alto-tn8jg3jprcqc'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-10'
---

# Senior Assurance Associate - Audit Innovation at Nace AI

- **Company:** Nace AI
- **Location:** Palo Alto, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-03-24
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-10
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/nace.ai/85167c8d-f96d-4ba5-8fff-d677314c3e19

## Job description

## Role overview

We're seeking an experienced Senior Assurance Associate to join our Palo Alto office. You'll apply your Big 4 audit expertise while pioneering AI integration in financial auditing, playing a critical role in shaping how artificial intelligence transforms audit quality and efficiency.

## What you’ll do

- Perform comprehensive financial audits and substantive testing procedures while leveraging AI-powered tools to enhance audit efficiency and accuracy
- Review and validate AI-generated audit findings, ensuring compliance with GAAP, PCAOB, and relevant standards
- Train and refine our custom AI models using real-world audit scenarios and edge cases
- Collaborate with engineering to identify intelligent automation opportunities
- Execute complex audit procedures requiring professional judgment and skepticism
- Design testing strategies for revenue recognition, internal controls, and financial statement assertions
- Guide AI development through expert feedback and quality assurance
- Contribute to next-generation audit methodology development
- Ensure quality control and risk management throughout the audit lifecycle

## Minimum qualifications

- 5+ years hands-on experience as Senior Assurance Associate or Early Manager at EY, PwC, Deloitte, or KPMG
- Extensive experience in financial audit and substantive testing across multiple industries
- Strong knowledge of US GAAP, PCAOB standards, and SOX compliance
- Bachelor's degree in Accounting, Finance, or related field
- CPA certification strongly preferred

## Preferred

- CPA/CIA/CISA
- Experience leading audit workstreams and coordinating testing procedures
- Familiar with SOC 2/ISO 27001 frameworks; evidence handling and independence standards.
- Interest in AI/ML applications in professional services

## About Nace AI

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Nace AI builds long-horizon reasoning models and AI agents that audit, reconcile, and report on financial and compliance data for enterprises.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed / Series A – $21.5M raised in 2026)
- **Headquarters**: Palo Alto, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2024
- **Founders**: Zhanibek Datbayev (CTO/Co-Founder), Ritesh Shrivastava (Co-Founder), Sudha Valluru (COO/Co-Founder), Swathi B (Co-Founder), and others

## Core Business
- **Primary industries**: Audit, Compliance, Finance, Accounting, Enterprise AI
- **Target customers**: B2B enterprise – specifically audit firms, finance departments, compliance teams, and professional services firms
- **Mission**: Build long-horizon AI that runs organizations; give professionals their time back by automating high-stakes knowledge work

## Products & Services
- **Metamodel**: A specialized small language model (SLM) platform that enterprises can customize with their own policies and knowledge. Used for audit, contract governance, and financial reporting.
- **Agentic Accounting**: AI agent that executes end-to-end financial audits, billing audits, and revenue leakage detection by connecting directly to databases.
- **Nace Verification Intelligence**: Evidence-based reasoning engine that processes up to 1 million files (PDFs, spreadsheets, databases) to automate SOX 404 reports, contract compliance checks, and due diligence.
- **Nace Process Automation**: Automatically maps transaction flows across 10+ disparate databases to visualize and reconcile processes.
- **The Macros**: A research preview product that lets power users create custom AI macros for repetitive professional tasks.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total funding raised – $21.5M (May 2026 round led by Walden Catalyst Ventures, with participation from General Catalyst, AME Cloud Ventures, AICONIC VENTURES); earlier $5M seed round (April 2025) led by General Catalyst.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: General Catalyst, Walden Catalyst Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures, AICONIC VENTURES
- **Growth Signals**: 
  - Launched from stealth in March 2025 with Metamodel 1
  - Raised $21.5M within 14 months of founding
  - Operations in 7 countries (US, Kazakhstan, India, Canada, Germany, Ukraine, Georgia)
  - 2,574 LinkedIn followers (+141% YoY)
  - Active job postings for senior roles (Product Manager, Audit Consultant, Growth Lead)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Metamodel approach**: Enterprises can turn internal policies and employee knowledge into custom, on‑premise AI models, enforcing consistency and accuracy.
- **Evidence‑based reasoning**: The system explains exactly where it looked and why – building trust in regulated environments (SOC 2 Type II, AICPA audited infrastructure).
- **Small model efficiency**: Uses specialized small language models (SLMs) instead of massive general LLMs, making deployments faster, cheaper, and compliant with data sovereignty requirements.
- **End‑to‑end automation**: Covers the entire audit workflow – from raw database ingestion to boardroom‑ready reports – without any manual spreadsheet work.

## Strategic Focus
- **Scale the Metamodel platform**: Turn enterprise policies into custom AI agents for every department.
- **Expand into adjacent compliance verticals** (tax, due diligence, contract governance).
- **Grow the team** across engineering, product, and go‑to‑market roles (currently 39–50 employees, with a heavy technical tilt of ~45%).
- **Maintain on‑premises / hybrid cloud deployments** to meet strict regulatory requirements of audit and finance clients.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Fast‑paced research‑first environment assembling a “world‑class team” to solve high‑stakes scaling challenges in AI reasoning.
- **Work model**: Hybrid workspace (Palo Alto offices); many roles are in‑office for close collaboration on complex ML and product work.
- **Team composition**: Heavy technical concentration (45% of staff are engineers/researchers), with deep domain expertise from ex‑Dropbox, Bloomberg, McKinsey, and AI labs.
- **Impact**: Build infrastructure that gives audit, compliance, and finance professionals their time back – directly reduces manual drudgery in multi‑billion‑dollar compliance markets.
- **Perks**: Not explicitly detailed, but the company emphasizes “autonomy, impact, and working on the hardest AI problems in enterprise.”

## Sources
1. [nace.ai](https://nace.ai/)
2. [nace.ai/careers](https://nace.ai/careers)
3. [LinkedIn – Nace AI](https://www.linkedin.com/company/nace-ai)
4. [Built In – Nace.AI](https://builtin.com/company/nace-ai)
5. [Jobs.ashbyhq.com – Nace AI](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/nace.ai)

## Other roles at Nace AI

- [VP of Engineering](https://feeny.ai/job/vp-of-engineering-nace-ai-palo-alto-q8d26ckgppqq) — Palo Alto, CA
- [Technical Program Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/technical-program-manager-nace-ai-palo-alto-8py4nbage3rw) — Palo Alto, CA
- [Senior MLOps Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-mlops-engineer-nace-ai-palo-alto-x8adzytpzn63) — Palo Alto, CA
- [Senior Product Designer (AI & Prototyping)](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-product-designer-ai-prototyping-nace-ai-palo-alto-g533v3r04kqy) — Palo Alto, CA
- [Financial Audit Consultant](https://feeny.ai/job/financial-audit-consultant-nace-ai-palo-alto-xd0vjpcf326t) — Palo Alto, CA
- [Senior Technical Recruiter](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-technical-recruiter-nace-ai-palo-alto-w9tkfpeqqv2f) — Palo Alto, CA
- [Growth Marketing Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/growth-marketing-lead-nace-ai-palo-alto-7bw1bwfdqydv) — Palo Alto, CA
- [Valuation Due Diligence Expert](https://feeny.ai/job/valuation-due-diligence-expert-nace-ai-palo-alto-c51g3m2xy7q0) — Palo Alto, CA
- [SOX Audit Expert](https://feeny.ai/job/sox-audit-expert-nace-ai-palo-alto-3tznenh4xa5w) — Palo Alto, CA
- [Senior Product Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-product-manager-nace-ai-palo-alto-vsa8p0mak591) — Palo Alto, CA