Strategic Finance Senior Associate - Compute

Socket.dev; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 138,000 - 175,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Startup equity

Health insurance

Benefits

Job summary

Together AI is a research-driven AI infrastructure company building the go-to platform for developers to build and deliver their AI applications. We are on a mission to significantly lower the cost of modern AI systems by co-designing software, hardware, algorithms, and models.

We offer competitive compensation, startup equity, health insurance, and other benefits. The role focuses on owning the cost base of data center build-outs, validating plans, and driving economic analyses for site

Qualifications

• 4+ years of experience with data center or large-scale infrastructure capex
• Experience with budget-to-actual tracking and variance analysis
• Ability to distill complex build economics into key drivers
• Strong collaboration with infrastructure engineers and finance partners
• Proven financial modeling skills including site-level TCO and scenario analysis

Responsibilities

• Own cost base and forecast for data center build-outs (non-recurring costs, hardware capex, power and cooling, operating costs)
• Validate build-outs against plan; monitor variances and drive resolution with Infrastructure Strategy and Engineering
• Maintain all-in unit cost of owned capacity (dollars-per-GPU-hour) for pricing, margins, and capital allocation
• Evaluate new data center opportunities; build economics including prepays, financing, tax treatment, and total cost of ownership
• Challenge hardware cost assumptions and surface savings opportunities with engineering and strategy teams
• Translate delivery timelines and milestones into cash forecast; track prepays to suppliers to reflect commitments
• Build dashboards and recurring processes to show committed capital, spend, and forecast to complete by site

Skills

Data center capex

Financial modeling

Budget vs actual

Stakeholder management

Cross-functional collaboration

Attention to detail

Job description

About the Role As a Strategic Finance Senior Associate at Together, you will own the cost side of our data center build-outs. Reporting to the Director of Strategic Finance, Infrastructure, you will be the financial counterpart to our Infrastructure Strategy team: building and maintaining the cost base for every deployment, validating that build-outs are tracking to plan, and helping evaluate the economics of the sites we take on next. This is a hands‑on, high‑ownership role at the center of the largest capital decisions the company makes. The ideal candidate has done this before: inside a hyperscaler, neocloud, colocation provider, or data center developer, or covering data centers from the investing side, and pairs real infrastructure fluency with exceptional financial rigor.

Responsibilities

• Own the cost base and cost forecast for Together's data center build-outs, spanning data center non-recurring costs, hardware capex across GPUs, networking, and storage, and ongoing operating costs
• Validate that build-outs are tracking to plan: maintain budget-versus-actual against approved estimates, flag variances early with a clear read on the driver, and work with Infrastructure Strategy and Infrastructure Engineering to close them out
• Maintain the all-in unit cost of owned capacity, on a dollars-per-GPU-hour basis by GPU type, as the source of truth used for pricing, margin, and capital allocation decisions
• Partner with Infrastructure Strategy to evaluate new data center opportunities, building the economics for candidate sites including prepays, financing requirements, tax treatment and incentives, and total cost of ownership over the life of the site
• Pressure-test hardware cost assumptions and surface savings opportunities with Infrastructure Engineering and Infrastructure Strategy, from equipment choices to storage sizing and cluster configuration trade-offs at different scales
• Translate hardware delivery timelines and payment milestones maintained by Infrastructure Strategy into the cash forecast, and own tracking of prepays to hardware and data center suppliers, so that cash forecasting reflects real commitments
• Build the reporting layer: dashboards and recurring processes that give leadership a current view of committed capital, spend to date, and forecast to complete, by site

Requirements

• 4+ years of experience with substantive exposure to data center or large-scale infrastructure capex, via one of two paths: Operating side: finance, capex planning, or infrastructure strategy/FP&A at a hyperscaler, neocloud, colocation provider, data center developer, or another operator running large build-out programs; Investing side: investment banking, infrastructure investing, or project finance with a data center / digital infrastructure focus, ideally paired with time in-house at an operator
• Working knowledge of the cost stack of a data center build: non-recurring costs, hardware capex (GPUs, networking, storage), power and cooling, and ongoing operating costs, and how each flows through COGS, depreciation, and cash
• Exceptional financial modeling skills, including site‑level TCO and scenario analysis, with the ability to distill a complex build into the handful of drivers that actually move the outcome
• Demonstrated ownership of budget-versus-actual for large capital projects, with the discipline to catch variances early and the credibility to drive them to resolution
• Comfort working directly with technical partners: able to hold a substantive conversation with infrastructure engineers, translate it into a cost number, and communicate the result clearly to non-technical and non-financial audiences
• Exceptional business judgment and intuition, with the creativity and problem‑solving instincts to tackle novel questions where there is no established playbook
• Strong work ethic and self‑directed, with the ability to manage multiple workstreams under tight timelines and close attention to detail

About Together AI

Together AI is a research-driven AI infrastructure company building the go-to platform for developers to build and deliver their AI applications. We believe open and transparent AI systems will drive innovation and create the best outcomes for society, and together we are on a mission to significantly lower the cost of modern AI systems by co-designing software, hardware, algorithms, and models. We have contributed to leading open-source research, models, and datasets to advance the frontier of AI, and our team has been behind technological advancement such as FlashAttention, Hyena, FlexGen, and RedPajama. We invite you to join us in our journey in building the next generation AI infrastructure. Together AI's investors include leading venture and growth investors such as General Catalyst, Kleiner Perkins, Salesforce Ventures, NVIDIA, Emergence Capital and Lux Capital. Together is one of the fastest growing AI startups and has been named to the Forbes AI 50 list of Top Artificial Intelligence Startups.

Compensation

We offer competitive compensation, startup equity, health insurance and other competitive benefits. The US base salary range for this full-time position is: $138k - $175k + equity + benefits. Our salary ranges are determined by location, level and role. Individual compensation will be determined by experience, skills, and job-related knowledge.

Equal Opportunity

Equal Opportunity Together AI is an Equal Opportunity Employer and is proud to offer equal employment opportunity to everyone regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity, veteran status, and more. Please see our privacy policy at https://www.together.ai/privacy