We are not always hiring. We are always interested in the right person.
The Lab is a boutique. We hire rarely. When we do, it is because we found someone we could not afford not to bring in. If that sounds like an invitation rather than a wall, write to us. We read everything that comes through this page.
Costing and AI. Not one or the other.
The people who fit are rare on purpose. They have done real costing work in industry or consulting, and they have AI in their blood. They can read a chart of accounts in the morning and a model card in the afternoon, and they would rather argue about which driver to use than perform a workshop.
You have built a cost model, not only read about one.
You can name the driver you chose for an overhead pool last year and explain why you were wrong about it. Years matter less than depth.
You use AI like a tool, not a vibe.
You write prompts the way a controller writes a memo. You read papers. You know what an LLM gets wrong about a calculation, and you do not pretend it does not.
You are allergic to hand-waving.
Round percentages without a method behind them make you tense. So does the word leverage as a verb. You would rather show a worked example than a slide deck.
You can write.
Plain prose. A finance audience can follow it. A peer reviewer can argue with it. We publish what we learn, and you will publish too if you join us.
Boutique, senior, remote-friendly, Portuguese roots.
No body shop, no junior bench, no offshore delivery centre. The people whose names are on the work are the people who did it. We are based in Porto and serve clients across Europe, the Gulf and beyond. You can work from anywhere we can get on a call at a reasonable hour, and you will spend a few days a year in Porto.
What the Lab is not.
If any of these would put you off, we are glad we said so before you wrote the application. Honesty saves both of us a meeting.
Apply, and we will read it.
Short on purpose. We would rather have one sharp answer to one real question than five fields of biography. The CV is optional. The link and the answer are not.
Goes to the Lab · Reply in 10 working days
What actually happens next.
We are not a careers portal with an automated funnel. We will not put you in a sequence. The version below is what really happens, in the order it really happens.
A human confirms it landed
You get a short reply from the Lab that your application reached us. Not a templated autoresponder with a ticket number.
A real answer
Yes, no, or we want to talk but the timing is off. If it is no, we say why in a sentence or two. We do not ghost.
Coffee, on a call
Forty five minutes with a senior partner. No panel, no case study under time pressure. We talk through a real problem and see how you think.
If we have nothing open right now we will say so, and ask whether we can keep the application on file. Some of the best people we have spoken to wrote to us a year before there was a place for them.
You probably are the right person. Write to us.
Two paragraphs and a link is enough. We will reply in person.
Workshops
Bring the method into the room.
One working profitability model, built from real data, that you take home at the end.
Reserve a seat
Reviewed by
Miguel Guimarães
Founding Partner, Cost and Profitability Consulting
More than 150 Time-Driven ABC engagements across 11 sectors since 2010, working within the Kaplan and Anderson framework.
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