Senior Tax Product Specialist (AI-Proficient)
Location: Office located near Chatham, NJ (Northern NJ) — full-time, in-person
Reports to: Founder / CEO
Base salary: $100,000–$130,000
Before you apply: You must already be authorized to work in the United States. We cannot sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment visa. We are not considering remote candidates, contractors, agencies, or offshore development firms.
About Avalon Tax
Avalon Tax builds intelligent tax preparation automation software for tax professionals (including CPAs and EAs). Our desktop application reads client tax documents, organizes the return workpapers, transfers data into professional tax software, and gives the preparer clear review points before anything moves forward. Today, Avalon Tax works with ProConnect, Drake, Lacerte, and CCH Axcess Tax. The preparer remains in control. Accuracy, explainability, secure handling of taxpayer information, and human review are central to how we build.
The Role
We are hiring an experienced US tax preparer to help us continue to build and test Avalon Tax, not to staff a prep desk. What we need is your preparer's knowledge of what a correct, completed complex return looks like: e.g. when a K-1 arrives with state-source income, you know exactly where that data belongs and you will work to make Avalon Tax put it there automatically. The work blends tax product design, quality assurance, and AI-enabled building, and it does not follow the rhythm of a seasonal production desk.
AI proficiency is a core qualification, not a nice-to-have. You should be able to use tools such as Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, or GitHub Copilot to work productively in a codebase: give an AI coding agent the right context and constraints, inspect what it produces, run or interpret tests, identify when it is wrong, and iterate to a verified result.
Most importantly, you need to be a self-directed problem solver who isn’t afraid of a challenge. We are a small team and expect you to make an impact in Week 1 on the job.
What You'll Do
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Serve as Avalon's authority on what correct, completed returns look like, federal and state, including multi-state returns
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Bring deep working knowledge of W-2s, the 1099 and 1098 families, K-1s (including state-source detail), brokerage statements, Schedules A, C, D/8949, E and F, retirement distributions, estimated payments, prior-year carryovers, extensions, and amended returns.
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Define where each extracted value belongs in professional tax software and how conditional items should be handled: taxpayer/spouse ownership, state treatment, aggregation, sign conventions, and multi-instance forms
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Build synthetic or properly de-identified test returns and use them to test Avalon Tax end-to-end: compare source documents, extracted data, software inputs, diagnostics, and the resulting return, and catch defects before customers encounter them.
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Turn customer-reported issues into reproducible test cases with sample data, expected behavior, and clear acceptance criteria.
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Use approved AI coding tools to navigate the repository, edit structured mapping files, and improve scripts, tests, fixtures, and documentation, reviewing and verifying every generated change rather than accepting it on faith.
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Translate annual tax law, form, and vendor software changes into prioritized product requirements and regression tests.
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Protect taxpayer information at all times, and never submit client data or personally identifiable information to an unapproved AI tool or service.
Required Qualifications
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Self-driven problem solver who enjoys a challenge and is naturally curious how we can use AI to improve the working lives of tax preparers
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At least 5 years of professional US tax preparation experience, with strong working knowledge of complex individual and business returns, and federal and state income tax compliance; substantive review experience is strongly valued. EA or CPA credential is a plus.
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Meaningful hands-on experience with at least one of: ProConnect, Drake Tax, CCH Axcess, Lacerte or UltraTax
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Demonstrated AI proficiency: you have repeatedly used Claude, Codex, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, or another capable AI system to create, modify, debug, or test working code or automation, not merely to draft emails or answer questions.
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Ability to inspect a proposed code or configuration change, test it, and verify the underlying tax result. Comfort with repositories, structured data, and a command line is expected.
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Strong tax research judgment, careful documentation, and the discipline to surface uncertainty and to distinguish an authoritative source from an AI-generated assertion, rather than guess.
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Ability to work full-time in-person in our Northern New Jersey office with potential for 1 day/week remote working at the discretion of the Founder/CEO
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Authorization to work in the US. We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment visa at this time.
What Success Looks Like
The successful hire should be able to:
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Independently validate representative Avalon Tax workflows in at least one professional tax platform by the end of the first month
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Take a tax or customer issue from an ambiguous report to a reproducible test case, supported tax conclusion, and clear implementation requirements.
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Use an AI coding agent to complete scoped repository work, then demonstrate through diffs, tests, and tax software output that the result is correct.
Compensation & Benefits
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Base salary: $100,000–$130,000, based on experience, tax credentials, breadth of software platform knowledge, and demonstrated AI proficiency.
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Equity: 0.50%–1.00% of the company in stock options, with a standard four-year vesting schedule and one-year cliff. Where you land in the range depends on experience, credentials, and salary placement, and we are open to trading some salary for additional equity if you prefer more upside.
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Benefits: You will be one of our first employees, joining before we have a formal corporate benefits program. Today that means 15 days of paid time off, paid holidays, earned sick leave as provided by New Jersey law, and paid support for continuing education and professional credentials.
As the team and the business grow, we intend to add a full benefits package, including health coverage and retirement. The trade is real: early-stage breadth, outsized influence on the product, and ground-floor standing at a growing company with a proven product, real customers and revenue, in exchange for big company benefits arriving over time rather than on day one.
Avalon Tax is an equal opportunity employer. We consider qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, veteran status, or any other status protected by applicable law. Reasonable accommodations are available during the application and interview process.