Strategic Finance Senior Associate - Compute

Together AI
San Francisco, CA
On-site

Who this role is best for

Strong fit for candidates with infrastructure finance experience who have worked in data centers or large-scale capex programs and can translate technical discussions into financial outcomes.

Best fit for

  • Candidates with prior experience in data center capex planning or infrastructure finance at hyperscalers or colocation providers
    — “4+ years of experience with substantive exposure to data center or large-scale infrastructure capex
  • Individuals who can analyze and model complex infrastructure economics and communicate them clearly to non-technical stakeholders
    — “able to hold a substantive conversation with infrastructure engineers, translate it into a cost number, and communicate the result clearly to non-technical and non-financial audiences

Things to consider

  • This role requires a strong balance of financial and technical expertise, which may be challenging for general finance professionals.
    — “pairs real infrastructure fluency with exceptional financial rigor
  • The candidate must be comfortable with high-ownership, hands-on work in a fast-moving startup environment.
    — “This is a hands-on, high-ownership role at the center of the largest capital decisions the company makes

How to stand out

  • Highlight experience in translating technical infrastructure discussions into financial models and forecasts.
    — “able to hold a substantive conversation with infrastructure engineers, translate it into a cost number
  • Showcase a track record of managing and resolving variances in large capital projects.
    — “Demonstrated ownership of budget-versus-actual for large capital projects
  • Emphasize your ability to distill complex data center economics into key drivers for leadership decisions.
    — “the ability to distill a complex build into the handful of drivers that actually move the outcome
  • Demonstrate your capability to build reporting dashboards for tracking committed capital and spending.
    — “Build the reporting layer: dashboards and recurring processes that give leadership a current view of committed capital
  • Position yourself as someone who can pressure-test hardware cost assumptions and identify savings opportunities.
    — “Pressure-test hardware cost assumptions and surface savings opportunities
Pace · Fast PacedCollaboration · HighAutonomy · MediumDecision Impact · TeamLevel · Senior

Derived from job-description analysis by Serendipath's career intelligence engine.

What success looks like

  • Owned cost base for data center build-outs
  • Validated build-outs against plan
Typical background
Strategic finance in tech or infrastructure companies

Skills & requirements

Required

Financial ModelingCost ForecastingData Center EconomicsCapital Allocation

Preferred

Infrastructure FluencyProject Finance

Stack & domain

Financial ModelingCost ForecastingData Center Build-outsInfrastructure StrategyCapital AllocationHardware Delivery TimelinesProblem-solvingTeam CollaborationProject ManagementBudgetingFinancial AnalysisFinanceInfrastructureData CenterCloud Computing

About the role

Original posting from Together AI via Greenhouse

About the Role

As a Strategic Finance Senior Associate at Together, you will own the cost side of our data center build-outs. Reporting to the Director of Strategic Finance, Infrastructure, you will be the financial counterpart to our Infrastructure Strategy team: building and maintaining the cost base for every deployment, validating that build-outs are tracking to plan, and helping evaluate the economics of the sites we take on next.

This is a hands-on, high-ownership role at the center of the largest capital decisions the company makes. The ideal candidate has done this before: inside a hyperscaler, neocloud, colocation provider, or data center developer, or covering data centers from the investing side, and pairs real infrastructure fluency with exceptional financial rigor.

Responsibilities

Own the cost base and cost forecast for Together's data center build-outs, spanning data center non-recurring costs, hardware capex across GPUs, networking, and storage, and ongoing operating costs

Validate that build-outs are tracking to plan: maintain budget-versus-actual against approved estimates, flag variances early with a clear read on the driver, and work with Infrastructure Strategy and Infrastructure Engineering to close them out

Maintain the all-in unit cost of owned capacity, on a dollars-per-GPU-hour basis by GPU type, as the source of truth used for pricing, margin, and capital allocation decisions

Partner with Infrastructure Strategy to evaluate new data center opportunities, building the economics for candidate sites including prepays, financing requirements, tax treatment and incentives, and total cost of ownership over the life of the site

Pressure-test hardware cost assumptions and surface savings opportunities with Infrastructure Engineering and Infrastructure Strategy, from equipment choices to storage sizing and cluster configuration trade-offs at different scales

Translate hardware delivery timelines and payment milestones maintained by Infrastructure Strategy into the cash forecast, and own tracking of prepays to hardware and data center suppliers, so that cash forecasting reflects real commitments

Build the reporting layer: dashboards and recurring processes that give leadership a current view of committed capital, spend to date, and forecast to complete, by site

Requirements

4+ years of experience with substantive exposure to data center or large-scale infrastructure capex, via one of two paths:

Operating side: finance, capex planning, or infrastructure strategy/FP&A at a hyperscaler, neocloud, colocation provider, data center developer, or another operator running large build-out programs

Investing side: investment banking, infrastructure investing, or project finance with a data center / digital infrastructure focus, ideally paired with time in-house at an operator

Working knowledge of the cost stack of a data center build: non-recurring costs, hardware capex (GPUs, networking, storage), power and cooling, and ongoing operating costs, and how each flows through COGS, depreciation, and cash

Exceptional financial modeling skills, including site-level TCO and scenario analysis, with the ability to distill a complex build into the handful of drivers that actually move the outcome

Demonstrated ownership of budget-versus-actual for large capital projects, with the discipline to catch variances early and the credibility to drive them to resolution

Comfort working directly with technical partners: able to hold a substantive conversation with infrastructure engineers, translate it into a cost number, and communicate the result clearly to non-technical and non-financial audiences

Exceptional business judgment and intuition, with the creativity and problem-solving instincts to tackle novel questions where there is no established playbook

Strong work ethic and self-directed, with the ability to manage multiple workstreams under tight timelines and close attention to detail

About Together AI

Together AI is a research-driven AI infrastructure company building the go-to platform for developers to build and deliver their AI applications. We believe open and transparent AI systems will drive innovation and create the best outcomes for society, and together we are on a mission to significantly lower the cost of modern AI systems by co-designing software, hardware, algorithms, and models. We have contributed to leading open-source research, models, and datasets to advance the frontier of AI, and our team has been behind technological advancement such as FlashAttention, Hyena, FlexGen, and RedPajama. We invite you to join us in our journey in building the next generation AI infrastructure.

Together AI's investors include leading venture and growth investors such as General Catalyst, Kleiner Perkins, Salesforce Ventures, NVIDIA, Emergence Capital and Lux Capital.  Together is one of the fastest growing AI startups and has been named to the Forbes AI 50 list of Top Artificial Intelligence Startups.

Compensation

We offer competitive compensation, startup equity, health insurance and other competitive benefits. The US base salary range for this full-time position is: $138k - $175k + equity + benefits. Our salary ranges are determined by location, level and role. Individual compensation will be determined by experience, skills, and job-related knowledge.

Equal Opportunity

Together AI is an Equal Opportunity Employer and is proud to offer equal employment opportunity to everyone regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity, veteran status, and more.

Please see our privacy policy at https://www.together.ai/privacy 

Source: Together AI careers (Greenhouse)

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