Strategic Finance

Black.ai; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive equity

Medical & dental benefits

Flexible PTO

Parental leave

401(k)

Learning & networking

Job summary

Baseten is seeking a strategic finance leader to join our fast-growing team in San Francisco. You will own and shape the finance function, from models and analytics to partnering with GTM, Product, and Infrastructure leaders.

You’ll influence pricing, deal structures, and capital allocations while building scalable reporting and processes. The role offers broad responsibility, with potential to lead a team and advance rapidly in a high-growth AI infrastructure company.

Qualifications

• Experience in strategic finance, FP&A, investment banking, PE/VC investing, and/or consulting.
• Excellent financial modeling and analytical skills.
• Ability to synthesize complex information into clear recommendations for executives.
• Comfortable operating in a fast-moving, ambiguous environment.
• Strong attention to detail with a bias toward ownership and execution.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, including explaining financial tradeoffs to product and engineering audiences and influencing senior stakeholders.
• Sound judgment when data is incomplete, and comfort making a call and revisiting it as you learn more.
• High intellectual curiosity and interest in AI / infrastructure / developer tooling.
• Advanced Excel / Google Sheets skills; familiarity with SQL or BI tools is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Financial Modeling: Build and maintain models across revenue, gross margin, compute costs, headcount, and strategic bets used by leadership.
• Business Partnership: Partner with GTM, Product, Infrastructure, and Operations to set targets and evaluate investments.
• Unit Economics: Analyze ARR, consumption, gross margin, GPU utilization, retention, and GTM efficiency.
• Pricing and Deals: Shape pricing, packaging, and structure of strategic customer and supplier deals.
• Board and Investors: Prepare board materials, investor updates, and fundraising analyses.
• Systems and Scale: Build reporting, dashboards, and processes that scale with revenue; use AI/automation to stay fast.
• Strategic Projects: Turn ambiguous questions into analysis and recommendations from market sizing to new lines.
• Leadership: For senior hires, own a major area of finance end to end, build and develop a team.

Skills

Strategic finance

Financial modeling

Analytical thinking

Executive communication

Excel/Sheets

Tools

SQL

BI tools

Job description

ABOUT BASETEN

Baseten powers mission-critical inference for the world's most dynamic AI companies, like Cursor, Notion, OpenEvidence, Abridge, Clay, Gamma, and Writer. By uniting applied AI research, flexible infrastructure, and seamless developer tooling, we enable companies operating at the frontier of AI to bring cutting-edge models into production. We're growing quickly and recently raised our $1.5B Series F, led by Altimeter Capital, Conviction Partners, and Spark Capital. Join us and help build the platform engineers turn to ship AI products.

THE ROLE

We're building a high-performing strategic finance team and looking for exceptional people at every level, from strong individual contributors to senior finance leaders ready to build and lead teams. Our revenue scales with customer usage, our costs scale with GPU capacity we commit to ahead of demand, and both move faster than any annual plan. That makes growth, portfolio construction, pricing, margin, and compute capacity decisions business model decisions. You'll sit at the center of them, working directly with Finance leadership and the executives who run the business to shape the company's trajectory.

This posting is intentionally broad within strategic finance. We'll match your scope and title to your experience and interest. We are looking for both specialists and generalists. The common thread is ownership: you'll take on hard, ambiguous problems, build what doesn't exist yet, and get more responsibility as fast as you can handle it. We encourage you to apply even if you don't meet every qualification listed below.

THE RESPONSIBILITIES

• Financial Modeling: Build and maintain models across revenue, gross margin, compute costs, headcount, and strategic bets that leadership uses to make decisions.

• Business Partnership: Partner with leaders across GTM, Product, Infrastructure, and Operations to set targets, evaluate investments, and work through operational tradeoffs.

• Unit Economics: Analyze the metrics that define a usage-based business, including ARR, consumption trends, gross margin, GPU utilization, retention, and GTM efficiency.

• Pricing and Deals: Shape pricing, packaging, and the structure of strategic customer and supplier deals.

• Board and Investors: Help prepare board materials, investor updates, and fundraising analyses.

• Systems and Scale: Build the reporting, dashboards, and processes that let finance scale as fast as our revenue. Use AI and automation extensively to keep the team fast and lean.

• Strategic Projects: Turn ambiguous business questions into clear analysis and recommendations, from market sizing to scenario planning to new business lines.

• Leadership: For senior hires, own a major area of finance end to end, build and develop a team, and act as a thought partner to Finance leadership and the executive team.

THE REQUIREMENTS

• Experience in strategic finance, FP&A, investment banking, PE/VC investing, and/or consulting. Prior experience in high-growth technology is strongly preferred

• Excellent financial modeling and analytical skills

• Ability to synthesize complex information into clear recommendations for executives

• Comfortable operating in a fast-moving, ambiguous environment

• Strong attention to detail with a bias toward ownership and execution

• Excellent written and verbal communication, including explaining financial tradeoffs to product and engineering audiences and influencing senior stakeholders

• Sound judgment when data is incomplete, and comfort making a call and revisiting it as you learn more

• High intellectual curiosity and interest in AI / infrastructure / developer tooling

• Advanced Excel / Google Sheets skills; familiarity with SQL or BI tools is a plus

STRONG CANDIDATES MAY ALSO HAVE

• 4+ years of experience. Level and title will match your experience

• Experience at an AI/ML, cloud infrastructure, or usage-based software company

• Familiarity with GPU and compute economics, or data center and cloud contracts

• Experience in sales finance, sales compensation, pricing, or deal desk

• Experience building a finance function from the ground up at a hypergrowth company

• Prior quantitative or technical experience

BENEFITS

• Competitive compensation, including meaningful equity

• (U.S. only) 100% coverage of medical, dental, and vision insurance for employee and dependents

• Flexible PTO policy including company wide Winter Break (our offices are closed from Christmas Eve to New Year's Day!)

• Paid parental leave

• Fertility and family-building stipend through Carrot

• (U.S. only) Company-facilitated 401(k)

• Exposure to a variety of ML startups, offering unparalleled learning and networking opportunities.

At Baseten, we are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace. We provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, genetic information, disability, or veteran status.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and will consider qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with applicable law (by example, the requirements of the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, where applicable).