Strategic Finance Lead

Lambda Inc.; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health, dental, and vision coverage

401k Plan with 2% company match

Job summary

Lambda in San Francisco is seeking a Senior Strategic Finance Lead to own the finance view for site selections, capital investments, and pricing in the public cloud. You will partner with the VP of Strategic Finance and work across Datacenter Operations, Supply Chain, Capital Markets and Sales.

The role emphasizes cross-functional influence, scalable framework design, and clear trade-offs for leadership, with a focus on unit economics and AI-native processes.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in strategic finance, corporate development, investment banking, infrastructure investing or a similar role, including time inside an operating company working with non-finance teams.
• Evaluated large, long-lived capital commitments and explained returns and risk to a general audience.
• Comfortable working with engineers and operators. Listen first and understand the business before you model it.
• Build frameworks and processes that outlast you, preferring a consistent, repeatable method to a clever one-off.
• AI-native, with clear examples of processes created or improved with AI tools.
• Write and present clearly. Hold a point of view with senior leadership and adjust it with new facts.
• Comfortable with ambiguity and with creating structure where there was none.

Responsibilities

• Own the finance view of our project and deal decisions. From early screening through final approval, ensure every site, deal and major purchase is assessed with the same rigor, and that returns, risks and assumptions are visible to the decision makers.
• Create alignment across the company. Reach out to Datacenter Operations, Supply Chain, Capital Markets and Sales to agree on assumptions and framing to speed finance rigor.
• Frame the trade-offs. When choosing between sites, customer opportunities, or financing options, lay out decision points clearly and make the trade-offs explicit.
• Build the system. Design and maintain the systems, templates and review cadence that let us evaluate projects consistently and audit past decisions.
• Bring it to the room. Prepare and present the finance view at deal and investment reviews.
• Go where the question is. Take on adjacent problems: own unit economics work, advise on pricing and packaging for Public Cloud, and collaborate with the broader finance team.

Job description

Lambda, The Superintelligence Cloud, is a leader in AI cloud infrastructure serving tens of thousands of customers. Our customers range from AI researchers to enterprises and hyperscalers. Lambda's mission is to make compute as ubiquitous as electricity and give everyone the power of superintelligence. One person, one GPU.

If you'd like to build the world's best AI cloud, join us.

*Note: This position requires presence in our San Francisco office location 4 days per week; Lambda's designated work from home day is currently Tuesday.

About the Role

Each new site, each large customer deal, and each hardware purchase is a long-term commitment of capital. Bringing one of those decisions forward is a multi-team effort across Datacenter Operations, Supply Chain, Capital Markets and Sales. Strategic Finance's job is to make sure the capital we commit earns the best return it can.

We are hiring a Strategic Finance Lead to own the finance view in that process. You will work alongside the VP of Strategic Finance and be the finance partner to the people who find sites, buy hardware, raise capital and sign customers. Depending on where the business needs you, the same work extends to our unit economics and to how we price our public cloud. The job is less about producing a model and more about making sure the right questions get asked, the trade-offs are laid out plainly, and leadership can see what they are choosing between before they choose.

Two things matter most in this role. First, you have to be very good at working with people who are not in finance. You will spend most of your time with engineers, operators, buyers and deal makers, and your influence depends on them wanting you in the conversation. Second, you have to think in systems. We are growing fast, and the way we evaluate projects has to scale with us: consistent enough to compare one site to another, detailed enough to drill into when something looks off, and simple enough to summarize for a CEO in a page.

This is a senior individual contributor role. You will own your work end to end and set the standard for how Strategic Finance work is done.

What You'll Do

• Own the finance view of our project and deal decisions. From early screening through final approval, make sure every site, deal and major purchase is assessed with the same rigor, and that returns, risks and assumptions are visible to the people deciding.

• Create alignment across the company. Reach out to Datacenter Operations, Supply Chain, Capital Markets and Sales to agree on assumptions and on how a decision should be framed, early enough that finance rigor speeds the decision up rather than slowing it down.

• Frame the trade-offs. When we are choosing between sites, between customer opportunities, or between ways to finance something, lay out the decision points clearly and make the trade-offs explicit. Help leadership see the choice, not just the recommendation.

• Build the system. Design and maintain the systems, templates and review cadence that let us evaluate projects consistently, audit a past decision, and zoom in or out depending on who is asking. The goal is that leadership has confidence in the numbers before we commit, and that confidence does not depend on one person.

• Bring it to the room. Prepare and present the finance view at our deal and investment reviews.

• Go where the question is. Take on adjacent problems as the business needs: own the unit economics work, be a thought partner to the Public Cloud team on pricing and packaging, and work across the broader finance team.

You

• 8+ years in strategic finance, corporate development, investment banking, infrastructure investing or a similar role, including time inside an operating company working with non-finance teams.

• You have evaluated large, long-lived capital commitments and know how to explain returns and risk to a general audience.

• You are comfortable working with engineers and operators. You listen first and understand the business before you model it.

• You build frameworks and processes that outlast you, and you prefer a consistent, repeatable method to a clever one‑off.

• You are AI-native, and have clear examples of processes you created and improved with AI tools.

• You write and present clearly. You can hold a point of view with senior leadership and change it when the facts change.

• You are comfortable with ambiguity and with being the person who creates structure where there was none.

Nice to Have

• Experience in datacenters, cloud infrastructure, telecom, energy or another capital‑intensive industry.

• Experience with supply chain or capital markets decisions from the finance side.

• Experience with unit economics or pricing in a consumption or infrastructure business.

Salary Range Information

The annual salary range for this position has been set based on market data and other factors. However, a salary higher or lower than this range may be appropriate for a candidate whose qualifications differ meaningfully from those listed in the job description.

About Lambda

• Founded in 2012, with 500+ employees, and growing fast

• Our investors notably include TWG Global, US Innovative Technology Fund (USIT), Andra Capital, SGW, Andrej Karpathy, ARK Invest, Fincadia Advisors, G Squared, In‑Q‑Tel (IQT), KHK & Partners, NVIDIA, Pegatron, Supermicro, Wistron, Wiwynn, Gradient Ventures, Mercato Partners, SVB, 1517, and Crescent Cove

• We have research papers accepted at top machine learning and graphics conferences, including NeurIPS, ICCV, SIGGRAPH, and TOG

• Our values are publicly available: https://lambda.ai/careers

• We offer generous cash & equity compensation

• Health, dental, and vision coverage for you and your dependents

• Wellness and commuter stipends for select roles

• 401k Plan with 2% company match (USA employees)

• Flexible paid time off plan that we all actually use

Equal Opportunity Employer

Lambda is an Equal Opportunity employer. Applicants are considered without regard to race, color, religion, creed, national origin, age, sex, gender, marital status, sexual orientation and identity, genetic information, veteran status, citizenship, or any other factors prohibited by local, state, or federal law.