R&D Finance Lead

Parallel Web Systems•Bay Area, CA

3d•$200,000 - $300,000•Onsite

About The Position

The R&D Finance Lead will own finance for Parallel’s research and engineering organization, which accounts for most of the company’s spending. The role will build and maintain the compute cost model, tracking training, inference, and infrastructure spending against commitments and usage, and forecasting costs as the product scales. The role partners with engineering and research leadership on headcount plans, budgets, and build-versus-buy and compute-spending tradeoffs. It also works with procurement on compute and vendor negotiations and with accounting on the treatment and capitalization of R&D costs. The R&D Finance Lead will translate cost per query, gross margin, and infrastructure efficiency into clear recommendations, ensuring the founding team understands the cost of major technical bets.

Requirements

Experience owning finance for an engineering or infrastructure organization at a high-growth technology company.
Understanding of reserved versus on-demand pricing, GPU commitments, and how utilization affects unit economics.
Ability to work with engineers, understand what they are building, and turn it into a cost model they trust.
Experience in a high-rigor environment and subsequently working where data is messy and processes have not yet been established.
Experience advising a technical leader that a plan was too expensive and helping find a cheaper approach.
Uses AI tools to do practical work.
Prefers building a function rather than inheriting one.

Nice To Haves

Experience at a company where compute or cloud was a top cost line.

Responsibilities

Own finance for the research and engineering organization.
Build a model for compute costs, tracking training, inference, and infrastructure spend against commitments and usage.
Forecast compute and infrastructure costs as the product scales.
Partner with engineering and research leadership on headcount plans, budgets, and build-versus-buy and compute-spending tradeoffs.
Work with procurement on compute and vendor negotiations.
Work with accounting on the treatment and capitalization of R&D costs.
Turn cost per query, gross margin, and infrastructure efficiency into clear recommendations.
Ensure the founding team understands the cost of major technical bets before making them.