Strategic Finance Manager, EPD San Francisco

vercel.com; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 220,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation package, including equity.

Inclusive Healthcare Package.

Flexible Time Off.

WFH budget to outfit your space.

Job summary

Vercel is seeking a Strategic Finance Manager to drive unit economics and efficiency across its platform. Based in San Francisco, you will partner closely with technical teams to optimize costs and enhance profitability through strategic initiatives.

This role involves leading cost-efficiency measures, forecasting COGS, and establishing financial frameworks. Candidates should have extensive experience in Strategic Finance and a solid understanding of cloud infrastructure dynamics.

Qualifications

• 5-8+ years in Strategic Finance, FP&A, IB, or Consulting.
• Strong modeling skills; experience with driver-based forecasting.
• Ability to partner with technical teams and translate usage to financial insight.

Responsibilities

• Own financial visibility into AI-related costs and infrastructure.
• Build self-service cost tooling for Product and Engineering.
• Lead infrastructure and AI efficiency initiatives.

Skills

Strategic Finance

Financial Modeling

SQL

Cloud Infrastructure Experience

Job description

About Vercel:

Vercel is the agentic infrastructure company. We free people and agents to ship what’s next.

For more than a decade, Vercel has shaped how the web is built. As the team behind Next.js, v0, and AI SDK, we create products that help builders move from idea to production with speed, security, and exceptional developer experience.

Now, software is entering a new era, and the next generation of products will not just be used by people. They will be built, extended, and operated by agents.

We are building the platform for that future, trusted by companies like OpenAI, PayPal, Ramp, Supreme, and millions of developers worldwide. Whether you’re building our products, supporting our customers, growing our community, or shaping our story, you’ll help define what comes next.

About the Role:

We are hiring a Strategic Finance Manager, Product (EPD) to partner with Engineering and Product to drive unit economics, infrastructure efficiency, and margin expansion across Vercel’s consumption-based platform.

This role spans cloud infrastucture & token spend, as well as emerging AI workloads (inference, gateways, and compute-intensive services). You will define how we measure and optimize the cost and profitability of every request, workload, and AI interaction on the platform.

What You Will Do:

Infrastructure & AI COGS Ownership

• Own financial visibility into compute, bandwidth, storage, and AI-related costs (e.g., inference, GPU/accelerated workloads)
• Translate product and infrastructure usage (requests, execution time, tokens, etc.) into clear cost drivers
• Partner with EPD to drive cost-efficient architecture and scaling decisions

Cost Visibility & Accountability

• Build self-service cost tooling for Product and Engineering (cost per request, per workload, per AI query)
• Enable teams to own and optimize their infrastructure footprint
• Standardize cost attribution across products and multi-tenant systems

Efficiency & Margin Expansion

• Lead infrastructure and AI efficiency initiatives (compute optimization, caching, vendor strategy)
• Define north star metrics (e.g., cost per request, cost per AI call, cost per GB)
• Embed cost efficiency into roadmaps and product decisions

Cost Allocation & Financial Rigor

• Develop scalable cost allocation frameworks across products, customers, and workloads
• Improve gross margin visibility, including AI product margins
• Support auditability and IPO readiness

Cross-Cutting Workstreams

Unit Economics

• Define product-level unit economics across Vercel’s product suite
• Connect usage (requests, compute, tokens, etc) to revenue and COGS

COGS / Gross Margin Forecasting

• Build driver-based models linking usage, revenue, and infrastructure costs
• Forecast COGS across core platform and AI products for both PLG & SLG segments
• Model margin impact of scale and efficiency improvements

Pricing & Packaging

• Partner on usage-based and AI pricing models
• Evaluate tradeoffs between growth, adoption, and margin
• Ensure pricing is reflected in forecasts and unit economics

About You:

• 5-8+ years in Strategic Finance, FP&A, IB, or Consulting
• Experience with consumption-based or cloud infrastructure businesses
• Strong modeling skills; experience with driver-based forecasting
• Ability to partner with technical teams and translate usage → financial insight
• SQL / data tooling experience strongly preferred

Benefits:

• Competitive compensation package, including equity.
• Inclusive Healthcare Package.
• Learn and Grow - we provide mentorship and send you to events that help you build your network and skills.
• Flexible Time Off.
• We will provide you the gear you need to do your role, and a WFH budget for you to outfit your space as needed.

The San Francisco, CA base pay range for this role is $180,000-$220,000. Actual salary will be based on job‑related skills, experience, and location. Compensation outside of San Francisco may be adjusted based on employee location. The total compensation package may include benefits, equity-based compensation, and eligibility for a company bonus or variable pay program depending on the role. Your recruiter can share more details during the hiring process.

Vercel is committed to fostering and empowering an inclusive community within our organization. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, gender expression or identity, sexual orientation, national origin, citizenship, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Vercel encourages everyone to apply for our available positions, even if they don't necessarily check every box on the job description.