Finance & Strategy, Compute Network

Anthropic; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 240,000 - 325,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation

Equity donation matching

Generous vacation and parental leave

Flexible working hours

Office space in San Francisco

Job summary

Anthropic in San Francisco is seeking a Strategic Finance Lead to own the economics of our network infrastructure from connectivity costs to data center planning. You will build deep, bottoms-up financial models, own planning and forecasting for major cost centers, and translate complex technical dynamics into clear financial narratives for leadership.

This role partners closely with network engineering, procurement, and operations to optimize investments, drive strategic decisions, and scale

Qualifications

• Exceptional analytical skills with the ability to synthesize data into insights and build complex financial models.
• Strong problem-solving and critical thinking to develop new frameworks for profitability and capital efficiency.
• Attention to detail and persistence to find the source of truth in complex financial and legal frameworks.
• Comfort working cross-functionally and ability to communicate complex financial information to non-finance audiences.

Responsibilities

• Finance lead for network capex and opex, including budgeting, forecasting, variance analysis, and plan maintenance.
• Build bottoms-up, data-driven financial models for network infrastructure with long-range forecasts and scenario analyses.
• Develop expertise in connectivity, colocation, and equipment contracts, pricing structures, and cost drivers; surface optimization opportunities.
• Be the subject matter expert on Anthropic’s network buildout and plan of record; ensure scalable FP&A tools and processes.
• Analyze ROI across build, lease, and service options and distill into actionable capacity planning frameworks.
• Collaborate with network engineering to translate capacity and site readiness into financial frameworks.

Skills

Analytical skills

Problem solving

Attention to detail

Cross-functional communication

Operational delivery

Leadership and collaboration

Business judgment

Education

MBA or advanced degree in finance/economics/business

Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field

Tools

SQL

Python

Excel

Job description

Anthropic’s mission is to create reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. We want AI to be safe and beneficial for our users and for society as a whole. Our team is a quickly growing group of committed researchers, engineers, policy experts, and business leaders working together to build beneficial AI systems.

About Anthropic

Anthropic’s mission is to create reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. We want AI to be safe and beneficial for our users and for society as a whole. Our team is a quickly growing group of committed researchers, engineers, policy experts, and business leaders working together to build beneficial AI systems.

About The Role

We are seeking a Strategic Finance Lead to provide finance leadership for our network infrastructure. In this role, you will be a key partner to our infrastructure teams, providing financial expertise and guidance to optimize our networking investments and drive strategic decision-making.

In this role, you’ll develop deep expertise in the economics of networks, from the monthly cost of connectivity and colocation to the long-range planning of fiber and data center builds. You’ll build financial models that inform Anthropic’s investment decisions, own planning and forecasting processes for major cost centers, and translate complex technical dynamics into clear financial narratives for leadership.

This is a high-impact role for someone who thrives at the intersection of finance and technology, and who is energized by building frameworks from scratch in a fast-moving environment.

Key Responsibilities

• Finance lead for network capex and opex, including budgeting, monthly forecasting, variance analysis, and financial plan maintenance
• Build and maintain detailed bottoms-up data-driven financial models for network infrastructure, including long-range forecasts, cost driver analyses, and investment scenario modeling
• Develop expertise in connectivity, colocation, and equipment contracts, pricing structures, and cost drivers, and surface optimization opportunities
• Subject matter expert on Anthropic’s network buildout, source of truth and plan of record
• Support the implementation and management of financial planning and procurement tools, ensuring our models and processes scale with the organization
• Analyze the economics of build, lease, and service options for network capacity, including ROI across dimensions like term, route, and ownership, and distill into actionable framework for capacity planning and deployment
• Partner closely with network engineering teams to understand how capacity, lead times, and site readiness scale, and translate those technical dynamics into financial frameworks

Minimum 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 come up with new frameworks for assessing profitability and capital efficiency in a rapidly evolving industry
• Attention to detail and patience for getting to the source of truth on complex and interconnected underlying financial and legal frameworks
• Comfort working cross-functionally and are adept at communicating complex financial information to non-finance audiences
• Proven track record of partnering with technical teams to drive financial optimization initiatives
• Excitement about working collaboratively in a fast-paced, dynamic environment and adapt well to change
• Possess a bias towards action, strong work ethic, and have experience driving operational outcomes under tight timelines
• Strong relationship building, business judgment, process management, and communication skills
• Are passionate about Anthropic's mission to build safe, transformative AI systems
• Are passionate about the effective integration of AI tools to streamline manual finance workflows
• Background in network, telecom, or large-scale computing infrastructure, including data centers, cloud service providers, etc

Preferred Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in strategic finance, infrastructure investment, private equity, growth equity, consulting, or investment banking, preferably with telecom, datacenter, or network infrastructure experience
• 3+ years of experience specifically in network infrastructure financial management
• Experience working directly with major carriers, colocation providers, or hardware vendors
• MBA or other advanced degree in finance, economics, or business
• Expertise in connectivity, equipment, or lease economics, contract structures, and pricing models
• Experience with capital project or long-lead equipment economics
• Proficiency with financial modeling tools and languages (SQL, Python, Excel)
• Experience building a computer, homelab, or home network from scratch

The annual compensation range for this role is listed below.

For sales roles, the range provided is the role’s On Target Earnings (\"OTE\") range, meaning that the range includes both the sales commissions/sales bonuses target and annual base salary for the role.

Annual Salary

$240,000—$325,000 USD

Logistics

Minimum education: Bachelor’s degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and/or experience
Required field of study: A field relevant to the role as demonstrated through coursework, training, or professional experience
Minimum years of experience: Years of experience required will correlate with the internal job level requirements for the position
Location-based hybrid policy: Currently, we expect all staff to be in one of our offices at least 25% of the time. However, some roles may require more time in our offices
Visa sponsorship: We do sponsor visas! However, we aren't able to successfully sponsor visas for every role and every candidate. But if we make you an offer, we will make every reasonable effort to get you a visa, and we retain an immigration lawyer to help with this.

How We’re Different

We believe that the highest-impact AI research will be big science. At Anthropic we work as a single cohesive team on just a few large-scale research efforts. And we value impact — advancing our long‑term goals of steerable, trustworthy AI — rather than work on smaller and more specific puzzles. We view AI research as an empirical science, which has as much in common with physics and biology as with traditional efforts in computer science. We're an extremely collaborative group, and we host frequent research discussions to ensure that we are pursuing the highest-impact work at any given time. As such, we greatly value communication skills.

The easiest way to understand our research directions is to read our recent research. This research continues many of the directions our team worked on prior to Anthropic, including: GPT-3, Circuit-Based Interpretability, Multimodal Neurons, Scaling Laws, AI & Compute, Concrete Problems in AI Safety, and Learning from Human Preferences.

Come work with us!

Anthropic is a public benefit corporation headquartered in San Francisco. We offer competitive compensation and benefits, optional equity donation matching, generous vacation and parental leave, flexible working hours, and a lovely office space in which to collaborate with colleagues. Guidance on Candidates' AI Usage: Learn about our policy for using AI in our application process.