Strategic Finance Lead, AI Compute & GPU Fleet

perplexity; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Perplexity is seeking a Strategic Finance Lead to partner with inference and infrastructure teams, optimizing cost and capacity for a GPU compute fleet. You will own economics from token-level serving costs to long-range financial planning, translating complex infra dynamics into clear leadership narratives.

You will develop capacity forecasts, model cost drivers, and advise on make-versus-buy decisions, driving efficiency across vendor clusters.

Qualifications

• Exceptional analytical skills with ability to synthesize data into complex financial models.
• Experience building frameworks for utilization and capital efficiency in a fast-moving infra environment.
• Strong collaboration with engineering teams and vendor counterparts to drive optimization.

Responsibilities

• Finance lead for GPU compute spend, including budgeting, forecasting, variance analysis and plan maintenance.
• Build bottoms-up models for the GPU fleet: capacity forecasts, cost drivers, investments.
• Develop expertise in GPU contracts, pricing, cost drivers, and surface optimization opportunities.
• Own capacity plan metrics: utilization, committed vs consumed spend, by vendor and cluster.
• Create internal token-cost curves and translate into token pricing strategies.
• Analyze ROI of in-house inference/training; compare chip types, clusters, workloads.

Skills

Analytical skills

Problem-solving

Attention to detail

Communication

Cross-functional collaboration

Financial modeling

Bias toward action

Tools

Excel

Job description

Perplexity is seeking a Strategic Finance Lead to partner with inference and infrastructure teams, optimizing cost and capacity for a GPU compute fleet. You will own economics from token-level serving costs to long-range financial planning, translating complex infra dynamics into clear leadership narratives.

You will develop capacity forecasts, model cost drivers, and advise on make-versus-buy decisions, driving efficiency across vendor clusters.