Strategic Finance Manager, Product

About the role

Vercel is on the lookout for a Strategic Finance Manager who will partner closely with the Engineering and Product teams to enhance unit economics, manage infrastructure costs, and drive margin growth within the company's consumption-based platform. This role encompasses oversight of cloud infrastructure expenditures, token costs, and the financial implications of emerging AI workloads, including inference, gateways, and compute-intensive services. You will play a pivotal role in defining how the organization assesses and enhances the cost-effectiveness and profitability of every request, workload, and AI interaction.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Take charge of financial oversight for compute, bandwidth, storage, and AI-related expenses, including inference and GPU workloads.
• Transform product and infrastructure usage metrics (such as requests, execution time, and tokens) into clear and actionable cost drivers.
• Work collaboratively with the EPD teams to make informed architectural and scaling decisions that lead to cost reductions.
• Develop self-service cost management tools for Product and Engineering teams that display costs per request, workload, and AI query.
• Empower teams to take responsibility for their infrastructure expenditures and guide them in optimizing costs.
• Standardize the attribution of costs across various products and multi-tenant systems to ensure clarity and consistency.
• Spearhead efficiency initiatives that focus on optimizing compute resources, enhancing caching strategies, and refining vendor relationships.
• Establish key performance metrics such as cost per request, cost per AI call, and cost per gigabyte to track efficiency.
• Integrate cost efficiency considerations into product roadmaps and strategic decision-making processes.
• Create scalable frameworks for cost allocation that encompass products, customers, and workloads.
• Enhance visibility into gross margins, particularly for AI-related products.
• Assist with audit preparations and initiatives aimed at IPO readiness.
• Define the unit economics at the product level across the entire Vercel product suite.
• Connect usage metrics (requests, compute, tokens) with revenue and cost of goods sold (COGS).
• Develop driver-based financial models that link usage patterns, revenue generation, and infrastructure costs.
• Project COGS for core platform offerings and AI products across both product-led growth (PLG) and sales-led growth (SLG) segments.
• Analyze how scaling and efficiency improvements impact profit margins.
• Collaborate on the development of pricing models that are based on usage and AI capabilities.
• Evaluate the trade-offs between growth, adoption rates, and margin preservation.
• Ensure that pricing strategies are accurately reflected in financial forecasts and unit economic analyses.

Requirements

• A minimum of 5-8 years of experience in Strategic Finance, Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A), Investment Banking, or Consulting.
• Proven experience in businesses that operate on a consumption-based or cloud infrastructure model.
• Strong proficiency in financial modeling, particularly with driver-based forecasting techniques.
• Ability to work effectively with technical teams and translate usage data into meaningful financial insights.

Nice to have

• Familiarity with SQL and experience using data analysis tools.
• Previous exposure to AI-related financial metrics and pricing strategies.
• Experience in developing financial frameworks for tech-driven companies.

Skills & tools

• Financial modeling expertise
• Driver-based forecasting capabilities
• Development of cost allocation frameworks
• Proficiency in SQL and data analysis tools
• Analysis of unit economics
• Forecasting COGS and gross margins

Practical notes

• The base salary range for this position in San Francisco is between $180,000 and $220,000.
• Compensation for roles outside of San Francisco may be adjusted based on the local cost of living.
• Total compensation packages may include equity options, comprehensive benefits, and eligibility for bonuses or variable pay.
• Benefits offered include inclusive healthcare coverage, flexible time off policies, mentorship opportunities, professional development events, necessary work equipment, and a budget for setting up a home office.

About the company

Vercel gives developers the tools and cloud infrastructure to build, scale, and secure a faster, more personalized web. As the team behind v0, Next. js, and AI SDK, Vercel helps customers like Ramp, Supreme, PayPal, and Under Armour build for the AI-native web.