Strategic Finance Manager, R&D

Serve as the dedicated finance partner for R&D, working with the CTO and engineering leaders to model R&D spending across AI, cloud infrastructure, compute, and engineering headcount, and translate financial analysis into resource and prioritization decisions.

Responsibilities

• Own the annual operating plan and rolling forecast for R&D
• Partner with engineering leaders on headcount, vendor, and infrastructure assumptions
• Lead the monthly R&D budget-versus-actuals process
• Analyze variances against plan and explain their drivers
• Maintain cloud infrastructure and compute cost models
• Build scenario models for hiring and resourcing decisions
• Prepare monthly, quarterly, and ad hoc analyses
• Inform leadership decisions on resource allocation and prioritization

Requirements

• 5 to 8 years of experience across investment banking, investing, consulting, or finance at a high-growth technology company
• Experience owning monthly, quarterly, and annual planning and reporting cycles end-to-end
• Hands-on experience using AI tools in finance work
• Expert-level Excel and Google Sheets modeling
• Experience building scalable AI-assisted or agentic reporting engines
• Experience supporting technical or product organizations