← All roles

Strategic Finance Lead - Compute

Perplexity· Finance
Apply on company site
Hybrid (San Francisco)$190k - $240kFull-timePosted 1mo ago

About the role

Strategic Finance Lead for GPU compute fleet, partnering with inference and infrastructure teams to optimize compute investments, model capacity and cost, and drive buy/build decisions.

Responsibilities

  • Finance lead for GPU compute spend, including budgeting, monthly forecasting, variance analysis, and financial plan maintenance
  • Build and maintain detailed bottoms-up financial models for the GPU fleet, including capacity forecasts, cost driver analyses, and investment scenario modeling
  • Develop deep expertise in GPU vendor contracts, pricing structures, and cost drivers, and surface optimization opportunities across the fleet
  • Serve as subject matter expert for Perplexity's compute capacity plan, owning source of truth on utilization, committed-versus-consumed spend, and capacity by vendor and cluster
  • Build internal token-cost curves distinguishing marginal from fully loaded serving cost, and translate them into internal and external token pricing
  • Analyze the ROI of in-house inference and training, including opportunity cost across chip types, cluster configurations, and workloads, distilled into a framework for capacity deployment
  • Partner closely with inference and infrastructure engineering to understand how serving and training workloads scale, and translate those technical dynamics into financial frameworks

Qualifications

  • 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 utilization and capital efficiency in a rapidly evolving industry
  • Attention to detail and patience for getting to the source of truth on complex and interconnected contract and usage data
  • Comfort being the finance person in the room with engineering leads and vendor counterparts, and adept at communicating complex financial information to non-finance audiences
  • A proven track record of partnering with technical teams to drive financial optimization initiatives, building enough trust to become indispensable to their roadmap and resourcing decisions
  • A bias toward action, strong work ethic, and experience driving operational outcomes under tight timelines
  • Background in AI, ML, or high-performance, large-scale computing infrastructure, including data centers and cloud service providers

Skills

Required:Financial modelingGPU compute/cost economics
Nice to have:Contract and pricing negotiation

Benefits

  • Full-time U.S. employees enjoy a comprehensive benefits program including equity, health, dental, vision, retirement, fitness, commuter and dependent care accounts, and more.
  • International Benefits: Full-time employees outside the U.S. enjoy a comprehensive benefits program tailored to their region of residence.
Last updated Sep 2, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About Perplexity

ai-plg-top-20brex-fastest-growing-2025liquid-ai-recruiting-targetsetter-30setter-30-2026-q1
Company profileWebsite

More open roles at Perplexity