Strategic Finance Lead — AI

Perplexity
San Francisco
Workplace: HybridFull timeUSD 190,000 - 215,000 annuallyFunction: Finance & AccountingExperience: 4+ yearsSkills: ["Analytical skills","Problem-solving","Critical thinking","Attention to detail","Cross-functional collaboration","Communication","Commercial judgment","Bias toward action","Strong work ethic"]

Lead the economics of AI products by building unit economics expertise from per-request serving costs to consolidated product-level margins. Own product-margin methodology that reconciles revenue and inference costs using production data, and translate complex model economics into clear leadership narratives. Forecast consolidated model costs, analyze pricing and deployment impacts, and partner with product, inference, and data teams to scale usage and serving costs into actionable financial frameworks.

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FursaFursa
Perplexity
Perplexity
2 days ago

Strategic Finance Lead — AI

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Source: Company careers pageValidated by: Fursa AI
Last checked: 9 hours agoStatus: Live

Job Summary

Lead the economics of AI products by building unit economics expertise from per-request serving costs to consolidated product-level margins. Own product-margin methodology that reconciles revenue and inference costs using production data, and translate complex model economics into clear leadership narratives. Forecast consolidated model costs, analyze pricing and deployment impacts, and partner with product, inference, and data teams to scale usage and serving costs into actionable financial frameworks.
Location: San Francisco
Workplace: Hybrid
Employment Type: Full time
Job Function: Finance & Accounting
Seniority: Mid level

Key Responsibilities

  • •Lead inference and model spend finance, including budgeting, monthly forecasting, variance analysis, and maintaining financial plans.
  • •Build and maintain product-margin models across the portfolio using production usage data to reconcile revenue, serving cost, and gross margin.
  • •Develop expertise in model provider contracts, pricing structures, and cost drivers; identify optimization opportunities across the model portfolio and routing mix.
  • •Serve as the unit economics subject matter expert, owning source-of-truth cost per request and margin by product, tier, and customer/feature economics.
  • •Own consolidated model-cost forecasts and translate pricing, packaging, and model-deployment decisions into margin and spend trajectories for product strategy.

Pay and Benefits

Salary: USD 190,000 - 215,000 annually
Equity and Bonus:Equity

Key Requirements

  • •Exceptional analytical skills to synthesize data into insights and build complex financial operating models.
  • •Strong problem-solving and critical thinking to create new frameworks for product margin and unit economics in a fast-changing environment.
  • •High attention to detail to ensure a reliable source of truth across usage, revenue, and cost data.
  • •Comfort partnering cross-functionally and communicating complex financial information to non-finance audiences.
  • •Background in AI, ML, or consumption-based business models with complex cost structures.
Experience:4+ yearsAIMLLLMConsumption-based business modelsPrivate equityGrowth equityConsultingInvestment bankingSoftwareAI product financial management
Skills:Analytical skillsProblem-solvingCritical thinkingAttention to detailCross-functional collaborationCommunicationCommercial judgmentBias toward actionStrong work ethic

Company Brief

Perplexity
Perplexity AI provides an AI-powered answer engine that returns conversational, citation-backed answers to user queries and offers Pro/Enterprise products and APIs for research, knowledge work, and search augmentation.
Industry: AI & Machine Learning
Company Size: Medium (51 to 250 employees)
Revenue: USD 50M to 100M
Growth: Scaleup
Valuation: Unicorn (USD 1B+)
Funding: Series D
Headquarters: San Francisco, United States
Founded: 2022
Glassdoor
Glassdoor: 4.6
WebsiteLinkedInGlassdoor