Trm Labs Strategic Finance Lead at Trm Labs responsible for owning finance for AI infrastructure and R&D investments. Partners with CTO and R&D leadership to shape investment decisions and financial frameworks.
Responsibilities
TRM is hiring a senior Strategic Finance Lead to serve as the finance owner for AI infrastructure and R&D. Reporting to the VP of Finance and partnering directly with the CTO, Head of AI, and R&D leadership, you will influence how TRM allocates investment across AI, cloud and compute infrastructure, technical talent, and product development.
Your mandate is to shape how a category-defining technology company invests in AI and cloud infrastructure—not simply report on the resulting cost. You will help determine how TRM scales its infrastructure, evaluates provider and technology choices, approaches build-versus-buy decisions, and balances technical capability, product velocity, flexibility, and cost.
This role sits at the center of some of TRM's most consequential R&D decisions. You will have the freedom to design the financial architecture for the domain—establishing the frameworks and operating mechanisms that turn complex technical and financial information into recommendations that directly influence the CTO and R&D leadership.
The impact you will have
Serve as the primary finance partner to the CTO and R&D leadership, shaping how TRM invests across AI, cloud and compute infrastructure, engineering capacity, and product development.
Own the economic framework for AI, cloud, and compute—connecting usage, billing, and operating data to forecasts and investment decisions.
Lead the financial evaluation of major R&D investments from the initial business case through decision, execution, and measurement.
Own R&D planning, forecasting, and performance management across engineering headcount, AI and cloud infrastructure, compute, software, and external partners—surfacing changes early enough for leaders to act.
Partner with the Head of AI, Engineering, Infrastructure, Procurement, and Accounting to improve infrastructure economics, evaluate major commitments, and translate analysis into action.
Turn complex R&D performance into a clear executive and board narrative: what changed, why it changed, and which decisions should follow.
Redesign R&D finance around AI, automation, and scalable systems so that more time goes toward shaping decisions and less toward assembling reporting.
Strategic questions you will help answer
Qualification
Applied AI fluencyAbout the Strategic Finance teamStrategic Finance is a smallWe are building a safer worldTRM moves quicklyOur work sits at the intersection of AI
Required
7+ years of experience across strategic finance, FP&A, investment banking, investing, consulting, business operations, or a related analytical role. We care more about the complexity of the work you have owned, the quality of your judgment, and the influence you have had than an exact number of years.
A record of independently owning consequential work from end to end: framing an ambiguous question, structuring the analysis, developing a point of view, and driving a recommendation toward action.
Exceptional financial and analytical skills, including the ability to create driver-based forecasts, investment cases, and scalable decision frameworks from incomplete or complex data.
The communication skills and judgment to become a trusted partner to senior technical leaders, challenge assumptions constructively, and explain financial implications in plain language.
The ability and curiosity to learn technical systems quickly, understand how AI products and modern infrastructure are built and scaled, and translate those operating realities into financial insight.
Applied AI fluency: you can demonstrate how you have used AI to improve the speed or quality of analysis, modeling, research, or recurring workflows—and how you evaluate the reliability of its output.
Relevant domain experience in one or more of the following areas: supporting Engineering, Product, Data Science, AI, or Infrastructure organizations; analyzing cloud, compute, AI infrastructure, or other usage-based technology costs; or evaluating vendor commitments, technical investments, product economics, and build-versus-buy decisions.
About the Strategic Finance team
Strategic Finance is a small, high-leverage team that works directly with TRM's leadership on planning, investment decisions, and company-wide strategy. We combine rigorous analysis with practical business partnership: our job is not simply to explain the numbers, but to help leaders make better decisions.
We are building a safer world. That promise shows up in how we work every day.
TRM moves quickly. We are a high velocity, high ownership team that expects clarity, follow-through, and impact. People who thrive here are energized by hard problems, experimentation, and continuous feedback. If something takes months elsewhere, it will ship here in days.
Our work sits at the intersection of AI, national security, and fighting crime. The problems are complex, the stakes are real, and the environment evolves quickly. The pace and intensity of the work reflect the importance of the mission. As a result, the way we operate requires a high level of ownership, adaptability, collaboration, and creative problem-solving.
