Strategic Finance Lead - AI

About the Role We are seeking a Strategic Finance Lead to help lead the economics of our AI products. In this role, you will be a key partner to our product, inference, and data teams, providing financial expertise to optimize model spend and drive pricing and margin decisions. In this role, you'll develop deep expertise in the unit economics of AI products, from per-request serving cost to consolidated product-level margin across our portfolio. You'll build the models that inform Perplexity's pricing, packaging, and model-deployment decisions, own the product-margin methodology that reconciles revenue and inference cost from production data, and translate complex model economics into clear financial narratives for leadership. This is a high-impact role for someone who thrives at the intersection of finance and AI product strategy, and who is energized by building frameworks from scratch in a fast-moving environment. This position is based in San Francisco and requires in-person attendance 2-3 days per week. Key Responsibilities Finance lead for inference and model spend, including budgeting, monthly forecasting, variance analysis, and financial plan maintenance Build and maintain product-margin models across the product portfolio, reconciling revenue, serving cost, and gross margin from production usage data Develop deep expertise in model provider contracts, pricing structures, and cost drivers, and surface optimization opportunities across the model portfolio and routing mix Serve as subject matter expert for product unit economics, owning source of truth on cost per request, margin by product and tier, and customer-segment and feature-level economics Own the consolidated model-cost forecast, translating product roadmaps and model transitions into forward-looking spend and margin trajectories Analyze the margin impact of pricing, packaging, and model-deployment decisions, distilled into a framework for product and pricing strategy Partner closely with product, in