Director of Strategic Finance

Brain Co.•San Francisco, CA

5d•Onsite

About The Position

This is a foundational leadership role at Brain Co. As our Founding Director of Strategic Finance, you’ll be the company’s first dedicated finance hire, owning FP&A end to end and building the finance function from the ground up. You’ll join at a pivotal moment: a $55M Series A, a team of 70+, and fast-growing enterprise engagements across governments, healthcare systems, and critical industries. Your mandate is to give the company a clear financial operating picture — forecasting, budgeting, unit economics, and board-grade reporting — and to build the models that drive decisions on hiring, pricing, and capital allocation. You won’t inherit a mature finance stack or playbook. You’ll build it. That means owning the operating model, standing up planning and reporting processes, instrumenting the business with the right metrics, and partnering directly with leadership as we scale. This role reports to the CEO.

Requirements

6+ years in finance with deep FP&A or strategic finance experience
Experience building operating models that founders, executives, and boards actually use to make decisions
Experience operating inside a high-growth startup, ideally as an early or first finance hire
Fluent in SaaS and enterprise metrics — ARR, NDR, gross margin, burn multiple — and ability to adapt them to an AI-native business with a nontraditional revenue mix
Understanding of complex enterprise and government contract structures: pilots, milestone-based billing, multi-year agreements, and the revenue recognition questions that come with them
Builder mentality, energized by early-stage environments where the playbook is still forming
Hands-on approach, owning the model at the spreadsheet level while designing systems and teams
Crisp communication with founders, the board, and non-finance leaders
Operate with the urgency and ownership of a founding team member

Nice To Haves

Investment banking, private equity, or consulting foundations are a plus
Proven ability to operate without infrastructure

Responsibilities

Own the company-wide operating model: revenue forecasting, headcount planning, expense budgets, and scenario analysis
Build and run the FP&A cadence, including annual planning, quarterly reforecasts, and monthly variance reviews with team leads
Own cash, runway, and burn: manage the cash forecast, treasury operations, and capital planning
Develop unit economics for enterprise AI deployments, including contract-level margins, compute and inference costs, and software vs. services mix
Prepare board materials, investor updates, and KPI reporting, and lead financial diligence for future fundraises
Partner with GTM and leadership on pricing, deal structures, and contract economics for complex enterprise and government deals
Oversee outsourced accounting, tax, and compliance providers, and mature the monthly close
Stand up financial systems and tooling (planning, billing, expense management) and lay the foundation for a future finance team