Director, R&D Finance & Engineering Ops

Neon; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 224,000 - 308,000; Full time

Job summary

Neon is seeking a Product Finance leader to own R&D capital allocation and engineering operations. You will partner with senior Engineering and Product Operations leaders to shape ROI, workforce planning, and the economics of AI-enabled software development.

You will build scalable finance workflows, manage headcount and CapEx planning, and mentor a high-performing team to enable rapid scale across global engineering hubs.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in Strategic/Product Finance or R&D FP&A.
• Deep experience managing large-scale R&D OpEx, headcount capacity modeling, and multi-site workforce planning.
• Proven track record partnering with senior Engineering, Product Operations, and People/Workplace executives.
• Systems-level thinker who can re-engineer financial processes from scratch to support rapid scale.
• Experience leading high-output finance teams in fast-moving environments.

Responsibilities

• Drive product-level ROI and R&D capital allocation with framework development and operationalization.
• Define engineering economics for AI tooling and token spend, and optimize cloud spend and compute investments.
• Shape global workforce and location strategy with multi-year headcount planning and real estate alignment.
• Scale R&D finance operations and build a high-performing, cross-functional finance team.

Skills

Strategic Finance

Executive partnership

Data-driven decision making

Operational rigor

Tools

SQL

Python

Databricks notebooks

Job description

Neon is seeking a Product Finance leader to own R&D capital allocation and engineering operations. You will partner with senior Engineering and Product Operations leaders to shape ROI, workforce planning, and the economics of AI-enabled software development.

You will build scalable finance workflows, manage headcount and CapEx planning, and mentor a high-performing team to enable rapid scale across global engineering hubs.