Perplexity AI

Perplexity AI

Strategic Finance Lead - Infrastructure

San Francisco

Sponsorship not specifiedDetected 43 days ago
AWSGCPAzureCloud PlatformsMachine LearningFinancial ModelingAccountingForecastingBudgetingExcelFP&ALeadershipCommunicationVariance Analysis

About the role

  • Perplexity is seeking a Strategic Finance - Infrastructure Lead to provide financial leadership over our cloud service provider (CSP) spend, compute and model capacity planning, and broader infrastructure economics.
  • This person will be a core partner to our engineering, infrastructure, and product teams, bringing financial rigor and judgment to the most consequential cost decisions the company makes.
  • You'll build the models that underpin our capacity investments, own the day-to-day CSP and model provider relationships, and help shape how we plan for infrastructure as the business scales.

Responsibilities

  • Build and maintain multi-year capacity forecasts and scenario models across CPU, GPU, and accelerator footprints
  • Partner with Strategic Finance leadership on long-horizon capacity decisions, including reserved/committed structures and build-out sequencing
  • Lead ROI and trade-off analysis for new platforms, hardware generations, and efficiency initiatives
  • Translate engineering and product roadmaps into capacity requirements and the cost envelope to support them
  • Own day-to-day management for all core infrastructure spend, including the monthly bill, variance analysis, and forecasting
  • Drive efficiency and optimization initiatives with engineering and infrastructure teams
  • Build cost-driver models that explain spend movements and surface the levers behind them
  • Support CSP rate and commit negotiations with rate analysis, benchmarking, and contract modeling
  • Maintain deep working knowledge of CSP contract terms, pricing structures, discount programs, and optimization opportunities
  • Partner with Accounting on contract operationalization, accrual accuracy, and compliance

Nice to have

  • 4+ years of experience in strategic finance or FP&A at a high-growth technology company, plus 2+ years in investment banking at a top-tier firm

This listing is sourced directly from Perplexity AI's careers page and normalized into a canonical job model.