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Perplexity AI is seeking a Strategic Finance Lead to own financial strategy and optimization for its GPU compute fleet. This is a high-impact individual contributor role at the intersection of finance and infrastructure, reporting to leadership and partnering closely with inference and infrastructure engineering teams.
Key responsibilities include: leading GPU compute spend management (budgeting, forecasting, variance analysis); building detailed bottoms-up financial models for capacity forecasts, cost driver analysis, and investment scenarios; developing expertise in GPU vendor contracts and pricing to surface optimization opportunities; maintaining source-of-truth reporting on utilization, committed vs. consumed spend, and capacity by vendor/cluster; building internal token-cost curves (marginal vs. fully loaded) to inform internal and external pricing; analyzing ROI of in-house inference and training across chip types and workloads; and partnering with engineering to translate technical scaling dynamics into financial frameworks.
You'll develop deep expertise in AI compute economics from token-level serving costs to long-range GPU fleet planning. You'll own internal cost analysis underpinning token pricing and translate complex infrastructure dynamics into clear financial narratives for leadership.
Ideal candidates have exceptional analytical skills, extraordinary problem-solving ability, attention to detail on complex contract/usage data, comfort communicating financial concepts to engineering and vendor counterparts, proven track record partnering with technical teams on financial optimization, bias toward action, and background in AI/ML or large-scale computing infrastructure. Preferred: 4+ years in strategic finance, infrastructure investment, PE, growth equity, consulting, or investment banking (ideally with infrastructure/datacenter experience); cloud or GPU infrastructure financial management experience; direct experience with committed-use economics and GPU procurement; deep GPU vendor economics expertise; chip architecture economics knowledge; and financial modeling proficiency.
Role is based in San Francisco with 2-3 days per week in-person attendance required.
About Perplexity AI
AI / Data / Infrastructure — AI answer engine and search product for consumers and enterprises.
