Strategic Finance Lead - AI
Primary stack
Job description
About the Position
Strategic Finance Lead - AI
We are seeking a Strategic Finance Lead to help lead the economics of our AI products. In this role, you will be a key partner to our product, inference, and data teams, providing financial expertise to optimize model spend and drive pricing and margin decisions.
Location
- City: San Francisco
- Country: United States
- Remote: No
- Work Location Type: Hybrid
Compensation
- Salary Range: $190K – $240K per year
- Equity: Included
Responsibilities
- Finance lead for inference and model spend, including budgeting, monthly forecasting, variance analysis, and financial plan maintenance
- Build and maintain product-margin models across the product portfolio, reconciling revenue, serving cost, and gross margin from production usage data
- Develop deep expertise in model provider contracts, pricing structures, and cost drivers, and surface optimization opportunities across the model portfolio and routing mix
- Serve as subject matter expert for product unit economics, owning source of truth on cost per request, margin by product and tier, and customer-segment and feature-level economics
- Own the consolidated model-cost forecast, translating product roadmaps and model transitions into forward-looking spend and margin trajectories
- Analyze the margin impact of pricing, packaging, and model-deployment decisions, distilled into a framework for product and pricing strategy
- Partner closely with product, inference, and data engineering to understand how usage and serving cost scale, and translate those technical dynamics into financial frameworks
Requirements
- Exceptional analytical skills with an ability to synthesize data into compelling insights and develop complex financial operating models
- Extraordinary problem-solving and critical thinking abilities to develop new frameworks for assessing product margin and unit economics in a rapidly evolving industry
- Attention to detail and patience for getting to the source of truth on complex and interconnected usage, revenue, and cost data
- Comfort working cross-functionally and are adept at communicating complex financial information to non-finance audiences
- Sound commercial judgment across pricing, packaging, discounting, and the tradeoffs between growth and margin
- Proven track record of partnering with technical and product teams to drive financial optimization initiatives
- Bias toward action, strong work ethic, and experience driving operational outcomes under tight timelines
- Background in AI, ML, or consumption-based business models with complex cost structures
Preferred Qualifications
- 4+ years of experience in strategic finance, private equity, growth equity, consulting, or investment banking, preferably with software or AI product experience
- Experience in AI or LLM product financial management, including direct work with model providers or inference platforms
- Deep expertise in usage-based pricing, subscription economics, and gross-margin and COGS attribution by customer and model family
- Experience with model serving economics, including how latency, throughput, and token usage flow through to margin performance
- Proficiency with financial modeling tools
We Offer
- Competitive salary
- Equity
- Comprehensive benefits program including health, dental, vision, retirement, fitness, commuter, and dependent care accounts
About the Company
Perplexity is at the forefront of AI innovation, dedicated to developing cutting-edge AI products. We are committed to fostering a collaborative and dynamic work environment where your contributions will directly impact our success.
© Perplexity Berlin. This job description was sourced from the employer's public career page. TheJob is not the employer — we index the posting and route candidates to the source. All content rights and hiring decisions belong to the employer.