Recently posted in Accounting firms

A traditional audit, tax, and advisory firm creating a VP-level AI product management role signals that its consulting business is being re-packaged around AI-built products rather than only billable professional services.

A Big Four firm recruiting seasonal, flexible-schedule audit associates for peak-season work signals how the profession is trying to compete for talent by trading the traditional partner-track promotion ladder for lifestyle flexibility.

A Big Four-style accounting and advisory firm is recruiting interns for affordable housing work, suggesting professional-services firms are building out advisory practices around housing finance and public-subsidy compliance (such as LIHTC deals) as a growth area.

A Big Four-scale firm is formalizing seasonal, flexible audit staffing as a retention and capacity strategy, reframing short-term busy-season work as a lifestyle-friendly career track in a profession long known for burnout.

A traditional regional CPA firm backed by venture capital is building an outsourced accounting-services arm and hiring a controller to run it, signaling that the profession's consolidation into tech-funded, platform-style accounting operations is reaching established firms.

Designing, building, and operating autonomous AI agent systems (software that plans and takes multi-step actions across tools) is a discipline that barely existed as a managed engineering function a few years ago; leading a dedicated 'agent engineering' function is a new kind of job rather than a rebrand of software engineering management.

A Big Four-style accounting and advisory firm elevating AI engineering to a VP-level executive function signals that AI delivery is becoming a core, leadership-owned line of business for professional services rather than a side capability.

A traditional accounting and advisory firm is standing up a senior design leadership function for 'agentic' experiences, signaling that it expects its clients to interact with AI agents that act on their behalf rather than just through dashboards and software screens.

A Big Four-style accounting and advisory firm elevating data and AI platform ownership to a head-of-function level signals that AI infrastructure is being treated as a core service line to sell and run internally, not just a side tool for audit work.

A mid-sized accounting firm is building a dedicated advisory practice around casino clients, a niche that signals how regional gaming operators are buying outsourced CFO-level finance support as their operations grow more complex.

Consulting firms like PwC are standing up embedded, client-site engineering teams that build on Palantir's Foundry platform, suggesting that the big accounting and consulting firms are becoming implementation arms for AI and data platforms rather than only advisers.

A major professional services firm is now requiring product owners to be hands-on, AI-native builders who prototype and automate their own workflows, signaling that AI fluency is being folded into ordinary management roles rather than handed to a separate specialist team.

A mid-sized professional services firm is standing up an AI 'foundry' function aimed at government technology clients, suggesting consultancies are building in-house AI build capacity to sell into the public sector.

Schellman is hiring for CMMC (Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification) assessments as the Pentagon moves to make third-party certification a condition for defense contractors, signaling that compliance auditing is becoming a large, government-driven growth market for firms that once focused on financial audits.

A Big Four-style advisory firm is building out a banking payments practice that explicitly advises on stablecoins and tokenized deposits, suggesting consultancies see digital-asset settlement as a near-term client revenue line rather than a fringe topic.

Forvis Mazars is building a packaged 'Insurance Transformation + AI' consulting offering and paying a senior leader $250K-$450K to own it, signaling that Big Four-style advisory firms see AI-enabled modernization of insurance operations (underwriting, claims, billing) as a major growth line for their financial services practice.

A major professional services firm is standing up a dedicated practice to help banks and insurers build physical data center capacity and modernize their infrastructure for AI, signaling that the AI buildout is now a consulting-scale, capital-intensive project in financial services rather than just a software question.

A Big Four firm is standing up a 'Forward Deployed Engineer' title, a role borrowed from AI labs and software startups that embeds engineers inside client sites, to sell AI transformation to banks and insurers, suggesting consultancies are repositioning as hands-on AI implementers rather than advisors.

A Big Four firm is building a Palo Alto hub around 'Physical AI' (robotics and embodied AI) to host CXOs, startups and investors, signaling that the professional-services giant is positioning itself as an ecosystem broker in the robotics and embodied-AI wave rather than only advising on software AI.

Big consulting firms are building dedicated digital-risk practices to audit AI-assisted coding and cloud-native platforms under SOX, signaling that controls over AI-generated software are becoming a paid compliance specialty.

A Big Four firm is packaging blockchain and AI engineering under a 'Financial Services Organization' (FSO) consulting banner, suggesting major consultancies are still betting on enterprise and public-chain work for banks despite the sector's volatility.

A Big Four consultancy is staffing forward-deployed engineers to embed frontier AI cyber models inside client security operations, signaling that its cyber practice is betting on selling AI-driven threat detection and remediation as a managed, hands-on service rather than advisory slides alone.

A Big Four firm is formally assigning business analysts to author specifications for AI agents and govern how they are embedded in client tax workflows, suggesting professional-services delivery is being restructured around specifying and supervising AI rather than only building software.

A Big Four firm is packaging AI-driven continuous threat exposure management, including agentic remediation, as a repeatable consulting offering that moves clients beyond scan-and-patch cycles.

A Big Four firm is formally institutionalizing AI architecture as a senior, enterprise-wide function that spans foundation model management, safety, agentic design, and vendor-tool governance, signaling that professional services is restructuring around controlling and integrating AI systems for clients rather than just advising on them.

A Big Four consultancy is standing up a dedicated 'Growth Platforms' business for neuro-symbolic AI, signaling that its strategy-consulting arm is moving from advising on AI to building and selling productized, auditable AI systems that combine machine learning with knowledge graphs and rules engines.

A Big Four consultancy is productizing AI security and governance as a standing practice line, signaling that enterprise demand for AI risk assessment and AI-SPM is large enough to justify dedicated management layers rather than being absorbed into general cybersecurity work.

A Big Four firm is building a dedicated forward-deployed engineering practice, embedding engineers inside financial institutions to ship applied AI, signaling that consulting is shifting from advising on AI toward building and operating it on client sites.

Big consultancies are standing up dedicated post-breach data-impact and notification practices, reflecting how regulatory and contractual disclosure duties have turned breach aftermath into a separately staffed, billable discipline.

A Big Four consultancy building a dedicated, quota-carrying alliance sales function around a single data-platform vendor signals that professional services is now being organized as a sales channel for specific cloud and data ecosystems rather than generic consulting.

EY is standing up a 'Hybrid AI Multi-Environment Runtime' spanning cloud, on-prem, edge, and air-gapped client environments, and is hiring for the stateful data layer (memory tiers, vector and graph stores, durable workflows) that such agentic AI systems would need, signaling a push to run AI agents inside regulated clients' own infrastructure rather than only in a central cloud.

EY is treating the security and trust layer for agentic AI workloads, including identity, secrets, and attestation for air-gapped and regulated deployments, as a core product differentiator rather than a back-office compliance function.

A Big Four firm is building a dedicated cadre of senior 'forward deployed' engineers to push AI-native systems into regulated work like tax, finance and risk, signaling that professional services is turning from advising on AI toward owning its production delivery.

A Forward Deployed Engineer embeds with a client to build and ship AI and data systems in situ, combining software engineering with on-site customer problem-solving. The role was popularized by AI and software startups around 2023 and is distinct from classic consulting or implementation work.

EY is standing up an AI-native runtime that must run models across cloud, on-prem, edge, and air-gapped environments, with AI-specific delivery, routing, cost metering, and governance treated as a distinct engineering function rather than a subset of platform or data teams.

Big Four consultancies are building dedicated blockchain security and digital asset custody practices, signaling that institutional crypto infrastructure is now mainstream enough to sell security advisory at senior-manager scale, with AI-enabled attacks explicitly named as a new threat vector.

EY is packaging AI-driven, agentic vulnerability management as a consulting offering, signaling that the Big Four see autonomous patching and continuous threat exposure management as a billable service line rather than just a tooling feature.

A Big Four consultancy is staffing forward-deployed engineers to put frontier AI cyber models into client security operations, signaling that the big consulting firms are betting on selling AI-driven security work as a managed delivery service rather than just advising on it.

A Big Four firm is standing up a dedicated internal program (ANDE, an AI-native development environment) and staffing it with conventional PMO and Agile project managers, suggesting that AI-assisted software delivery is being institutionalized as a governed process rather than a set of individual tools.

A Big Four consultancy is standing up embedded 'forward deployed' engineering teams inside banks and insurers, signaling that professional services firms see selling and building applied AI on-site with financial clients as a core growth line rather than advisory work alone.

The Big Four firm is productizing AI governance as a billable consulting practice, signaling that enterprise demand for auditable Responsible AI controls (not just policy documents) has become large enough to staff as a standing service line.

EY is standing up a dedicated in-house function to run AI models and agents across cloud, on-prem, edge, and air-gapped environments, treating AI serving, routing, cost metering, and governance as a discrete operational discipline rather than a side task for platform or data teams.

A Big Four firm building a dedicated identity-verification engineering practice around biometrics, liveness detection, and NIST IAL2 proofing signals that consultancies see automated identity proofing and passwordless authentication becoming a standard, billable service line rather than a niche security task.

A Big Four firm is packaging SOX controls, cloud architecture, and AI-assisted development review into a single 'Digital Risk' manager track, suggesting that auditing AI-generated code and continuously changing platforms is becoming a standard consulting service line rather than a niche specialty.

EY-Parthenon is standing up a dedicated neuro-symbolic AI growth platform and staffing it with senior business leadership, signaling that a Big Four consultancy is betting its AI sales and delivery on explainable, auditable hybrid systems (knowledge graphs and rules layered over ML) rather than generic LLM tooling, and that it wants strategy-level leaders to own that bet.

Big Four audit firms are building dedicated blockchain and digital-asset assurance teams, signaling that auditing crypto exchanges, custodians, and validators has become a mainstream professional-services line rather than a niche.

The day-to-day work is developing and validating robotic AI systems in simulation and on physical platforms, then turning them into reusable client showcases. Roles centered on building and validating embodied, physical-world AI systems as a consultancy product barely existed as a job category a few years ago.

A Forward Deployed Engineer embeds with clients to build and ship AI applications inside their operations, combining customer-site engineering, solution design, and production deployment. This pattern, popularized by AI labs and startups around 2023-2024, did not exist as a common professional role three years ago.

EY is building its own AI runtime substrate spanning bare-metal GPUs, Kubernetes, and air-gapped on-prem and edge deployments, signaling that a Big Four firm is treating infrastructure for running agentic AI in regulated client environments as a core product it must own.

The Medicaid H.R. 1 project manager shows that federal 2025 law changes (mandatory work requirements and more frequent eligibility renewals) are creating a new, dedicated layer of state-level Medicaid implementation work, which consultancies like BerryDunn are staffing up to serve.

A Big Four-style firm formally creating seasonal, flexible audit senior roles signals that professional services is restructuring its talent model around workers who want to trade promotion track for lifestyle, a response to chronic staffing strain in busy season.

A Big Four-adjacent firm is packaging seasonal, project-based audit work as a lifestyle perk to recruit experienced accountants who want flexibility over a traditional promotion track, which hints at a structural staffing strain during peak audit seasons.

A Big Four firm is formalizing part-time, project-based audit staffing for its busy seasons, a sign that the traditional 'up or out' partnership-track model is being reshaped to attract people who want flexibility over promotion.

A Big Four firm is formalizing part-time, project-based audit staffing around its busy seasons, a sign that professional services is trying to flex its workforce and compete for talent that wants autonomy over a traditional partner track.

A Big Four firm formalizing seasonal, flexible-schedule audit staffing as a retention strategy in a profession famous for burnout and up-or-out promotion pressure, marketed around lifestyle rather than career ladders.

A Big Four firm is formalizing part-time, seasonal audit staffing built around flexibility and lifestyle, a sign that professional services is reworking its traditional up-or-out career model to compete for talent during its brutal busy seasons.

A Big Four firm is formalizing part-time, season-only audit staffing with lifestyle-oriented marketing, signaling how professional services is trying to retain talent by trading the traditional partner-track promotion ladder for flexibility.

A Big Four-style advisory firm is building a dedicated CrowdStrike practice and pairing it with nearshore delivery teams, signaling that large consultancies are becoming resellers and operators of a single vendor's security platform rather than vendor-neutral advisors.

Big accounting firms are building dedicated practices around the Inflation Reduction Act's clean energy credits and excise tax issues, a sign that compliance advisory for green incentives has become a sizable, staffed business line.

A major accounting firm is building a dedicated practice around Inflation Reduction Act clean energy credits and excise tax, signaling that advising developers on clean energy tax incentives has become a large, staffed professional-services market rather than a niche specialty.