Strategic Finance Lead - Compute

About the role

We are seeking a Strategic Finance Lead for our GPU compute fleet. In this role, you will be a key partner to our inference and infrastructure teams, providing financial expertise to optimize our compute investments and drive capacity decisions. In this role, you'll develop deep expertise in the economics of AI compute, from token-level serving cost to the long-range financial planning of our GPU fleet. You'll build the models that inform Perplexity's capacity and make-versus-buy decisions, own the internal-cost analysis that underpins internal and external token pricing, and translate complex infrastructure dynamics into clear financial narratives for leadership. This is a high-impact role for someone who thrives at the intersection of finance and infrastructure, and who is energized by building frameworks from scratch in a fast-moving environment.

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

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 utilization and capital