Accounting Jobs in Raleigh-Durham: A Cement Company Out-Posts Every CPA Firm

Across the 428 accounting and finance postings we're tracking in the Raleigh-Durham metro right now, the single biggest poster is a building materials company, Martin Marietta, with 17 openings, which is exactly as many as Cherry Bekaert (7), CBIZ (5), and Citrin Cooperman (5) have open combined. If you assumed a Research Triangle accounting job means a CPA firm in a glass tower near RTP, our data says the market is a lot more mixed than that, and a lot more interesting.

I want to walk through what the Triangle actually looks like from the postings side, because Raleigh gets lumped in with Charlotte as another North Carolina finance town and the two behave differently. All the numbers below come from our own database of cleaned, de-duplicated accounting and finance postings as of mid-October 2026, which links straight to employer career pages and refreshes daily, so treat the counts as a snapshot and the patterns as the useful part.

Who is hiring accountants in Raleigh-Durham?

Employers with five or more open accounting and finance roles in the metro are a varied bunch. Martin Marietta leads with 17, then Genworth Financial and UNC-Chapel Hill at 10 each, Advance Stores Company at 9, a state health and human services agency at 8, Cherry Bekaert at 7, Enact Holdings at 6, and then CBIZ, Citrin Cooperman, and Holman at 5 apiece.

Read that list again and you get a building materials producer, two insurers, an auto parts retailer, a state agency, a university, and three advisory or CPA firms. That's a market where you can build a whole career without ever doing a busy season at a public accounting firm, which is something I wish more people in their first two years of looking would hear, because a lot of them are pointing every application at the same four firm names and wondering why the inbox is quiet.

Geography inside the metro matters too. Of the postings with a clean city tag, Raleigh itself carries 216, Durham 59, Morrisville 46, Chapel Hill 36, and Cary 25. So if you only search Raleigh you're seeing about half the market, and Morrisville punching above Cary surprised me the first time I saw it.

What do accountant jobs pay in Raleigh-Durham?

Among the postings that actually print a salary, the median midpoint for a staff accountant is about $63,300 (we have 32 staff accountant openings in the metro), and for a senior accountant it's about $73,200 (23 openings). Move up the ladder and the numbers climb quickly: accounting manager lands near $112,500, controller near $113,600, and tax manager around $115,000.

Those staff and senior numbers sit below the government figures in our Raleigh accountant pay breakdown, which puts the median accountant in the Raleigh-Cary metro at about $80,000 and the mean at $90,110, and both sets of numbers are right. The BLS median counts every accountant and auditor in that metro at every level, from first-year staff to long-tenured managers, so the staff and senior rungs land below it and the manager and controller postings, at roughly $112,500 to $113,600, land above it. Two more differences are worth knowing: those government tables come from May 2023 survey data, and Raleigh-Cary leaves out Durham and Chapel Hill, which the government counts as a separate metro.

On the support side, payroll specialists show a median near $56,100 and accounts payable specialists near $50,400, and a financial analyst sits around $89,700. These are advertised pay ranges, not what anyone ended up signing for, and the sample sizes per role are small enough that I'd treat each as a rough center of gravity and nothing tighter than that. If a single posting pays $15,000 more than the median, that's usually a bank or an insurer talking, not a typo.

Why do so few Triangle postings show a salary?

Only 38% of Raleigh-Durham accounting and finance postings (163 of 428) include pay, against 54% across the roughly 31,900 US metro postings in our database. That's a real gap, and it means that in this market you're negotiating blind more often than you would be in a state with a pay transparency law forcing the number onto the page. We dug into how much that varies by state in our look at salary transparency across accounting jobs.

The practical fix is to stop waiting for the posting to tell you. Anchor on the medians above, check the percentile bands in our salary research tool, and ask for the range in the first recruiter call. Most hiring managers have the range in their head and will say it out loud if you ask early and plainly, and the ones who won't tell you are giving you information too.

How much of the work is hybrid, and do you need the CPA?

About 34% of Triangle postings mention hybrid work, versus roughly 19% nationally across US metros, so this is a hybrid-leaning market and it shows. If you want fully remote you'll find a better selection on our remote accounting jobs page, but a lot of Triangle employers are offering two or three office days, which is a decent compromise if you like a commute that doesn't involve I-40 at 5pm.

On the credential, 30% of local postings name a CPA as required or preferred, which is basically identical to the national figure of about 30%. So the Triangle doesn't demand more letters than anywhere else, and a staff accountant role without the CPA is a very normal thing to apply for here. If you're considering the license, the North Carolina CPA Board lays out the current pathways on its license applicant page, and I'd check it directly rather than trusting anyone's summary, mine included, because the education rules in several states have been moving.

What I'd do if I were job hunting in the Triangle

Search all five cities at once and ignore the employer names you already know. Set alerts for the industrial and insurance employers above, because their postings turn over without the noise that surrounds big public accounting firms, and they tend to reward someone who can close a month cleanly and explain it. If you're early in your career, a controller track at a company like a materials producer can get you real ownership of the close years before a firm would.

Then do the thing most people skip and pull a pay anchor before the first interview. Our accounting and finance job board shows direct-from-employer listings, and if you're weighing the Triangle against its neighbor to the south, senior accountant jobs in Charlotte covers the banking-heavy version of North Carolina so you can see the contrast.

Frequently asked questions

Are there a lot of accounting jobs in Raleigh-Durham?

We're tracking 428 live accounting and finance postings in the metro as of mid-October 2026, spread across Raleigh, Durham, Morrisville, Chapel Hill, and Cary. That number moves daily, so check the job board for what's open today.

What does a staff accountant make in Raleigh, NC?

Among local postings that show pay, the median midpoint is about $63,300. That's below the roughly $80,000 government median for all accountants in the Raleigh-Cary metro, because the median covers every experience level and staff roles sit near the bottom of that ladder. Treat $63,300 as a center point, since advertised ranges vary a lot by employer type and only a minority of postings print one.

Who hires the most accountants in the Raleigh-Durham area?

Martin Marietta leads with 17 open roles in our data, followed by Genworth Financial and UNC-Chapel Hill at 10 each. Public accounting firms like Cherry Bekaert, CBIZ, and Citrin Cooperman each post fewer than the leader.

Do Raleigh accounting jobs require a CPA?

About 30% of local postings require or prefer a CPA, in line with the national share. Plenty of staff and senior accountant roles are open without the license.

Are Raleigh-Durham accounting jobs remote or hybrid?

Roughly a third of postings mention hybrid arrangements, higher than the national average, while fully remote roles are better found on a dedicated remote search.

The Triangle rewards people who look past the obvious firm names, so open the board, set five alerts, and see how many of those employers you'd never have searched for.