Founding Strategic Finance

Sela AI; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Salary range 150k–250k USD per year

Top-tier medical, dental, vision

401(k) with strong match

Unlimited PTO

Hybrid in-office SF: four days a week

Job summary

Sela AI, the market-leading AI voice agent for mortgage lenders, seeks a Founding Strategic Finance lead to shape the finance function as we scale. You’ll own the operating model, pricing structures for enterprise deals, and the finance setup from contract to cash, reporting to the CEO and board.

You’ll work closely with founders, sales, and legal to forecast, measure, and invest in scalable systems, while building a finance team as the company grows. This role is hybrid, SF-based.

Qualifications

• 2+ years in startup finance or 3+ years in FP&A
• Hands-on P&L, AE models, and commission plans
• Structured thinking with strong judgment
• Clear communicator with founders, sales, legal, and vendors
• High ownership and initiative in evolving environments
• Exposure to mortgage/regulated finance is a plus

Responsibilities

• Own planning & modeling: operating model, revenue, gross margin, costs, headcount, cash
• Design pricing and deal structures for large lenders and support enterprise negotiations
• Build the board deck and financial narrative for investors and raises
• Create and improve finance infrastructure, quote-to-cash, billing, contracts, and compliance

Skills

Startup FP&A

P&L modeling

AE pricing models

Board communication

Ownership mindset

Fast-paced environment

Tools

Billing systems

Job description

Founding Strategic Finance

About Sela

Sela is the market-leading AI voice agent for mortgage lenders. Founded in 2024, we’ve grown like crazy (~$0→14M in 21 months), and currently count 6 of the 10 largest independent mortgage banks in the U.S. as enterprise customers. If we’re successful, the cost of owning a home in the US will become ~1% cheaper. We’ve raised $21M+ across our Seed and Series A from top investors.

Why This Is a Huge Opportunity

Around 1% of the U.S. labor force works in phone sales, representing roughly $100B of annual salary, and the industry is poised at the brink of complete disruption. We are at the cutting edge of this economic transformation, one of the first companies creating real, durable economic value through applied AI.

Buying a house is the largest financial decision most people make in their lives, and homeownership is tied to many other purchases, including life insurance, homeowners insurance, alarm systems, home renovations, solar panels, and more. By owning the mortgage vertical, we will own the relationship with the consumer, allowing us to serve as the essential AI infrastructure for high-consideration consumer sales.

Why Join

Explosive growth: The market pull is exhilarating. We’ve grown 10x in the past 12 months and more than 100x since our seed round, all without a dedicated sales or marketing team. Building something that people want so badly is the best feeling you can have in a startup.

Team and culture: We are a high-agency team where the bar is high and everyone makes the people around them better. Collaboration and intensity are core team values: people truly care about their work and their coworkers. At the same time, we don’t take ourselves too seriously.

Challenging problems: Outperforming human sales teams on half a million daily calls is not easy. Low-latency, real-time infra. 99.9% uptime. Enterprise-grade privacy and security. Advanced simulation and evaluation systems. Flexible A/B testing. AI scheduler and dialer. We own the whole stack and we do not compromise on quality.

Well-funded: We’ve raised $21M+ in total funding, most recently a $15M Series A in June 2026.

The Role

Sela’s AI voice agents hold real conversations with real people on behalf of some of the largest mortgage lenders in the country. We are looking for a Founding Strategic Finance lead to help us build the finance function that scales with it.

You’ll report directly to the CEO and work on decisions that shape the business, from how we price large enterprise deals to how we plan and where we invest. One day you’re deep in the P&L model, the next you’re prepping the board deck or reviewing a contract. You’ll help decide what gets measured, how we forecast, and which systems we put in place along the way.

What You’ll Own

Planning & modeling

• Build and own the company’s operating model (revenue, gross margin, cost structure, headcount, and cash) and turn it into the plan the founders run the business against

• Model core revenue drivers: customer-level usage trends, net revenue retention, upsell and cross-sell

Pricing & deals

• Design pricing and deal structures for some of the largest mortgage lenders in the country, and partner with sales on every enterprise negotiation

• Build the sales capacity model and design the commission plans for our first AE team

Board & investors

• Own the board deck and the financial narrative to investors, and help lead preparation for our next raise

Finance infrastructure

• Build quote-to-cash from scratch, from contract to invoice to collections, so usage-based enterprise revenue is billed accurately and on time

• Be the financial reviewer on every commercial contract, working with outside counsel and advisors

• Choose and stand up the finance stack (systems, vendors, outside accountants) and set the processes the finance team will run on as it grows

What We’re Looking For

Must-haves

• 2+ years in startup finance, or 3+ years total experience with a strong FP&A background

• Hands‑on experience with core P&L work, AE models, and commission plans

• Structured thinking and strong judgment. You can take a messy question, break it down, and get to a recommendation without being handed a framework.

• A clear, effective communicator who can work with founders, sales, legal, and vendors, and present to a board

• High ownership and initiative. You’re comfortable operating without a fully developed playbook and figuring out what works.

• The ability to thrive in a fast-moving environment where the product, market, and business are all evolving quickly

Nice-to-haves

• B2B SaaS background where you’ve seen what a scaling finance function looks like

• Experience with usage-based pricing or revenue models

• Experience managing billing systems or other finance vendors

• Comfort reviewing commercial contracts

• Exposure to mortgage, lending, or another regulated financial services vertical

Benefits

• 150k–250k salary

• Top-of-market medical, dental, and vision coverage for you and your dependents

• 401(k) with a top-of-market employer match

• Unlimited PTO

• Hybrid in-office schedule: four days a week together in SF, with a flexible remote day on Wednesdays