Among the remote ESG reporting accountant jobs open worldwide, this is a full-time, work-from-home post paying $72,000 per year (USD) for a qualified accountant who can prepare climate disclosures with the same discipline used on a statutory audit file. You are likely a fit if most of these apply:
Stripped to essentials, the ESG reporting accountant job description is this: you prepare the sustainability section of the annual report so that it stands up to the same scrutiny as the primary statements. In practice that means drafting IFRS S2 climate-related disclosures, tying the sustainability data back to the financial statements, building and maintaining the reporting workpapers in Workiva and Excel, extracting source data from SAP Sustainability, and answering assurance providers when they ask for support. If you have prepared a notes pack, you know the rhythm; only the subject matter changes.
IFRS S1 is the general requirements standard. Think of it as the IAS 1 of sustainability reporting: it sets out the reporting entity, the same reporting period as the financial statements, materiality judged by the effect on investors, and the expectation that disclosures connect to the rest of the annual report. IFRS S2 is the topic standard for climate. It is organised around four pillars you will recognise from TCFD: governance, strategy, risk management, and metrics and targets.
The parts of S2 that land on your desk most often:
The accounting mindset helps here. Every metric needs a definition, a boundary, a source and a control, exactly like a revenue figure.
IFRS S1 asks for connected information, so the climate section cannot quietly use different assumptions from the accounts. A short checklist I would expect you to run on every cycle:
Hypothetically, if the strategy note says a plant will close early because of carbon pricing, but the depreciation note still carries its original useful life, someone has to raise it. That someone is you.
Treat the sustainability file the way you would treat a year-end lead schedule. Excel carries the calculations: emission factor lookups, activity data by site, intensity ratios, and the movement from prior year to current year. Workiva holds the linked report, so a figure updated in the source sheet flows into the disclosure text and tables without retyping.
Each tab should show its preparer, reviewer, date, source reference and a tickmark legend. Hard-coded inputs belong in one clearly labelled area. Reconciliations should foot and cross-foot. If an assurance reviewer can follow your file without calling you, the file is doing its job.
Much of the activity data, such as energy use, fuel consumption and refrigerant losses, sits in SAP Sustainability modules or feeds into them from operational systems. The role involves running the extracts, checking completeness against the list of sites and entities, and following up on gaps before they reach the report. Units of measure, duplicated meters and mid-year acquisitions cause most of the trouble. Document each extract with its run date and parameters so it can be reperformed later.
Limited assurance is becoming common for sustainability information, and some reporters are already planning for reasonable assurance. Your part is the PBC list, walkthroughs of how data moves from SAP into Excel and Workiva, sample support for selected sites, and clear written responses to queries. The large audit networks, the Big Four among them, run dedicated ESG assurance teams, and remote reporting roles like this one sit on the other side of that table. Knowing how those teams test (agree to source, recalculate, inspect controls) makes your support faster and cleaner.
Most ESG reporting accountant work from home jobs run alongside the financial close, which takes planning:
The listing asks for a degree in accounting, with CPA, ACCA or CA preferred, and two to four years in financial or sustainability reporting. The core ESG reporting accountant skills expected are working knowledge of IFRS S1 and S2, strong Excel, and Workiva or SAP Sustainability experience. The closest thing to an ESG reporting accountant certification is the IFRS Foundation's Fundamentals of Sustainability Accounting (FSA) credential, listed as a plus; it shows you understand how sustainability factors connect to enterprise value, which is the lens the ISSB standards use.
The ESG reporting accountant salary per year for this post is $72,000 (USD), full-time and fully remote, open to applicants worldwide.
Many people in this seat came from audit, group reporting or technical accounting and picked up climate work when a client needed it. If you are working out how to become an ESG reporting accountant, a sensible route:
Anyone hunting for entry level ESG reporting work should note this listing asks for prior experience, though audit or financial reporting time counts. Typical ESG reporting accountant interview questions probe boundaries, emission factors and reconciliation to the accounts.
The two roles share a toolkit: standards interpretation, workpapers, controls and audit support. The differences lie in the data and the judgement. A financial reporting accountant works mostly with ledger data that already passes through established controls. An ESG reporting accountant often works with operational data that was never designed for external reporting, so more time goes into completeness and estimation methods. Forward-looking narrative, such as scenario analysis, also features more heavily.
Jurisdictions are adopting or adapting the ISSB standards on their own timelines, and assurance requirements are tightening alongside them. The direction of travel is toward sustainability information being prepared, controlled and assured much like financial information. That favours accountants. Nobody can promise a particular career path, but the skills in this role transfer well across industries and across the audit and preparer sides of the profession.