AI ROI Consultant

CloudZero•Boston, MA

About The Position

CloudZero is establishing a new AI ROI Services practice, designed to implement measurement frameworks for customer AI expenditures and generate financial reports that withstand executive scrutiny. This role involves developing and refining the methodology for these engagements, using customer success data as the initial testing ground. The AI ROI Consultant will be responsible for the business case and methodology of each engagement, transforming attribution data (expenditures, sources, and outcomes) into trusted financial metrics such as ratios and payback periods, supported by a compelling narrative. This is a hands-on, build-as-you-go position. The consultant will pressure-test and iterate on the existing draft methodology with real customers to ensure its repeatability and effectiveness. The role requires a proactive approach to defining success criteria, identifying potential confounding factors early, and collaborating with various teams to ensure data integrity and methodological soundness.

Requirements

7+ years of experience at a top-tier strategy or management consulting firm (e.g., McKinsey, BCG, Bain, Deloitte, Accenture) or equivalent in-house strategy experience at a Staff or Principal level.
Proven ability to personally own and defend a business case and financial metrics to skeptical executives.
Track record of building business cases for B2B SaaS software environments, including structuring ambiguous problems, forming hypotheses, testing them, and defending conclusions.
Strong quantitative and financial modeling skills, including ROI and payback calculations, cohort analysis, sensitivity testing, and proactive identification of confounders.
Executive presence with the ability to clearly articulate financial data and withstand challenging questions from executives.
Bachelor's degree required.
Comfort operating in an environment with minimal structure; ability to build processes and methodologies in real-time.
Fluency in AI-native workflows, using tools like Claude for analysis structuring, workstream management, and deliverable creation.
Experience advising customers or internal stakeholders on AI adoption, translating technical capabilities into business value understandable by non-technical executives and finance partners.
Experience defining and refining taxonomies (event types, activity classifiers, cohort logic) as tooling and data models evolve.
Experience with software spend analysis, SaaS metrics, or customer success data; AI spend analysis is a plus.

Nice To Haves

MBA or another advanced quantitative degree is a strong plus.
AI spend analysis experience.

Responsibilities

Own the business case and ROI methodology for each engagement, from inception to completion.
Develop a defensible calculation for the Activity-to-Return catalog, quantifying operational value against AI investment as a ratio and payback period.
Differentiate and rigorously assess operational returns (e.g., time and capacity savings) from strategic returns (e.g., retention, ARR per TAM).
Pre-define success metrics and identify potential confounding factors before the start of each engagement.
Collaborate with the data analyst to integrate spend, activity, and outcome data, and with Operations to establish the necessary data infrastructure.
Liaise with the FDE team to ensure integrations capture the data required by the methodology.
Present the final ROI calculation in a format suitable for CFO discussions, incorporating thought leadership and advisory insights.
Contribute to productizing repeatable aspects of the methodology to streamline future engagements.