Accounting & Finance Staffing in Houston, TX
Accountants, controllers, and finance leaders placed on contract, contract-to-hire, and direct-hire terms across greater Houston, from the Energy Corridor and downtown to the Texas Medical Center, the Galleria, and The Woodlands. Specialized recruiters, honest timelines, and a 92% twelve-month retention rate.
Last updated: July 10, 2026
KORE1 places accountants, controllers, FP&A analysts, and finance leaders across Houston on contract, contract-to-hire, and direct-hire terms, from the Energy Corridor to the Texas Medical Center. Our average time-to-fill is 17 days, and twelve-month retention runs 92%.
Picture the last week of the month. Your revenue accountant just left for an operator two floors up, the quarterly joint-interest billing run is due Friday, and the reserve report needs a depletion entry nobody left instructions for. Your controller is now covering the close and the audit request list at the same time. The req you posted Monday pulled ninety resumes, and not one of them has actually booked a working interest under ASC 932.
That is the exact gap we fill. We are an accountant staffing partner inside the wider KORE1 accounting and finance staffing practice, and our recruiters have placed finance talent across Houston through more than one energy cycle. We know the Energy Corridor revenue-accounting bench, the Texas Medical Center controllership market, and which oil-and-gas or SAP profile actually holds up through a public-company month-end.
Why Houston finance teams call us first
A generalist agency floats ten resumes with the right keywords near the top. A finance specialist sends two people who have closed your exact books on your exact stack. When a strong staff accountant in this town fields three recruiter calls a week, that difference is the whole search.
Most of our Houston placements come off a warm bench our team has built over two decades of finance recruiting. When an Energy Corridor operator needs joint-interest billing, revenue accounting, and oil-and-gas depletion under ASC 932, we usually have someone in mind before the job description is signed off. When a Texas Medical Center institution needs fund accounting and grant reporting for a nonprofit hospital system, we are not working a cold board either. Houston is also a downstream and trade town. Ship Channel refiners and petrochemical plants run cost and inventory accounting at a scale most metros never see, and the Port keeps a steady pull on import, export, and customs-adjacent roles.
What changes for you? Fewer interview rounds and faster qualified submittals. Teams that lose finalists here lose them to slow calendars, not to comp, and a warm pipeline is how you stop handing your first choice to the operator one elevator bank over.
Match the engagement to the need
Three models. Pick by the shape of the work, not the job title.
Contract suits a defined runway. Audit prep, an ERP migration, a leave to cover, diligence ahead of a midstream acquisition. You get seasoned help for the window you actually need it, with no pressure to convert. Start with contract staffing.
Contract-to-hire is the play when the seat is real but the headcount is still crawling through the capital budget, or when you want to watch someone carry one close before you commit. Sixty or 90 days, clear conversion math, nothing hidden. Here is how contract-to-hire staffing runs end to end.
Direct-hire is for the seat that is staying. Senior accountants, accounting managers, assistant controllers, the people who hold the institutional memory through the next reorg or the next oil price swing. We place those permanently with a replacement guarantee. See direct-hire staffing.
Not sure which one fits? Describe the pain on a call. We will tell you the model we would run and why.
Where we staff across greater Houston
Houston is not one finance market. It is a cluster of them, each with its own pace, comp band, and tolerance for a commute across the loop or out to the Corridor. We treat them that way.
We also staff non-finance roles across the metro through our Houston staffing agency, IT staffing in Houston, and Houston engineering recruiters. Hiring finance talent in other metros? See our city pages for Dallas, New York, San Francisco, and Atlanta.
Finance roles we place most often in Houston
Four seats we fill every month across the metro, plus the specialty energy and healthcare searches that come in when the standard pipeline will not cut it.
Staff & Senior Accountants
Reconciliations, journal entries, and full-cycle close ownership, from one-to-three-year staff accountants to CPA-track seniors in whatever ERP you run. See accountant staffing.
Controllers & Accounting Managers
Close ownership, GAAP financials, audit prep, and team leadership for growth-stage and public Houston companies. Start with controller staffing.
FP&A & Financial Analysts
Budgets, board decks, and the price-deck and production models that keep an energy or PE-backed company honest between quarters. Explore financial analyst staffing.
CPAs, Tax & Audit
Licensed CPAs, tax accountants, and internal or external auditors for the searches that need a credential and a track record. See CPA staffing.
Also hiring bookkeepers, tax accountants, revenue and cost accountants, and AP/AR specialists. Need a finance leader instead of an individual contributor? See CFO staffing. Hiring through local recruiters? Meet our accounting recruiters and finance recruiters.
How we vet finance talent
Short on ceremony. Long on relevance. Five steps, usually inside a week.
- 01Intake call. Thirty minutes. We learn the ERP, the close timeline, the reporting complexity, and the deal-breakers.
- 02Sourcing. Active Houston bench first, then warm referrals, then targeted outreach. No spray-and-pray job boards.
- 03Skills screen. A finance-specialist recruiter calls every candidate before they reach you. Technical questions, system fluency, and comp alignment against real Houston numbers, where energy pay bands, offshore rotations, and Texas take-home math all read differently than they do for a candidate weighing a coastal offer.
- 04Reference triangulation. Two references, both former direct managers where we can get them. We call, we listen, and we flag anything that does not add up.
- 05Submittal. Two to four qualified candidates with a scored assessment. You see why each one fits, not just the resume.
Common Questions
How much does an accounting staffing agency cost in Houston?
Contract accountants bill at a loaded hourly rate, and direct-hire placements run a percentage of first-year base, usually 20% to 25% depending on role seniority and the Houston market. We quote the number upfront.
No padded fees, no surprise line items, and every direct-hire placement carries a replacement guarantee. Energy and healthcare demand keeps steady pressure on the local finance pool. According to the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, accountant and auditor employment keeps growing through 2033, and a metro this size feels that pull first. We price from real Houston numbers instead of a national flat rate.
How fast can you actually fill a finance role here?
Average time-to-fill across our placements over the past 12 months is 17 days. Staff accountants trend shorter. Senior, controller, and technical energy searches trend longer.
Sourcing speed is rarely the bottleneck. Interview cadence is. Houston teams that run one 30-minute screen inside the first 48 hours close searches fastest, and the ones that book interviews three weeks out tend to watch their first choice sign somewhere else, because a good accountant in this market is not on the bench for long.
Do you place energy and oil-and-gas accountants specifically?
Yes, and it is a core strength here. We regularly place revenue accountants, joint-interest billing analysts, and technical accountants fluent in oil-and-gas depletion, AFEs, and joint-venture accounting under ASC 932.
Houston is the deepest energy-finance pool in the country, upstream through downstream, and our recruiters have worked it across price cycles. We also cover the adjacent skill sets, from midstream and petrochemical cost accounting to derivatives and hedging under ASC 815, so a specialized search does not have to start from a cold board.
Why use a Houston specialist instead of a national firm?
Local recruiters read this market the way a national desk working off regional averages cannot. We know Houston comp bands, the active candidate pool, and which employers are quietly heading into a freeze.
The mix here is unusual, and a generalist misses it. Energy operators, the Texas Medical Center, the Ship Channel, and the aerospace corridor near NASA each pull from different pools and clear at different numbers. Texas also levies no personal income tax, per the Texas Comptroller, so a relocating candidate reads a Houston base differently than a coastal one, and the local CPA pipeline runs through bodies like the Texas Society of CPAs.
Should I hire a contract accountant or a direct-hire one?
Hire contract when the work has a finite window, such as audit prep, an ERP migration, leave coverage, or acquisition diligence. Hire direct when the seat is permanent and you need someone to carry institutional knowledge.
Contract-to-hire splits the difference when you want a working trial, or when the work is already on the desk but headcount approval is still moving through the capital budget. Most Houston transitions land on a blended approach, and we will map it with you on the intake call.
Can you staff healthcare and nonprofit finance roles too?
We do it every month. Beyond energy, we place fund accountants, grant and research-finance analysts, and controllers for the hospital systems and nonprofits clustered around the Texas Medical Center.
Roughly a third of our annual finance placements are specialty roles, healthcare and nonprofit among them. Where a local bench is thin, we tell you what the realistic pool looks like before you commit to a search plan. The AICPA has documented how tight CPA supply has become nationally, and a high-demand market like Houston feels it first.
Your next close in Houston does not have to be the one that runs the team into the ground.
or call 949-706-6990