Strategic Finance Manager, Product

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 infrastructure & 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. This is a hybrid role based in San Francisco, with in-office days on Monday, Tuesday, and Friday.

What you'll 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

What you need:

• 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

Compensation & 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.