Director of Strategic Finance

About Brain Co. Brain Co. is an applied AI startup co-founded by Jared Kushner and Elad Gil, and backed by leading Silicon Valley builders including Patrick Collison and Andrej Karpathy. We are building AI applications for the world’s most important institutions, delivering impact on real-world problems across governments, healthcare systems, and critical industries. Our progress so far: Automated construction permitting for a sovereign government → 80% faster, unlocking $375M+ in value Optimized supply chains for a leading global energy company → 30% lower cost, 99% reliability, preventing $100M+ in losses Streamlined hospital patient care across national health systems → 40% better outcomes, 80% less admin work Company momentum: Raised a $55M Series A from leading investors Built a team of 70+ AI experts from Tesla, Google DeepMind, NVIDIA, and Databricks At Brain Co., we focus on applying frontier AI to real institutional challenges, working alongside governments, healthcare systems, and critical industries to modernize how essential services operate. We are looking for leaders who want to help bring new technology into institutions that impact millions of people. About the Role 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. What You’ll Do 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 Who You Are You have 6+ years in finance with deep FP&A or strategic finance experience. You’ve built operating models that founders, executives, and boards actually use to make decisions. You’ve operated inside a high-growth startup, ideally as an early or first finance hire. Investment banking, private equity, or consulting foundations are a plus — but you’ve proven you can operate without infrastructure. You’re fluent in SaaS and enterprise metrics — ARR, NDR, gross margin, burn multiple — and you can adapt them to an AI-native business with a nontraditional revenue mix. You understand complex enterprise and government contract structures: pilots, milestone-based billing, multi-year agreements, and the revenue recognition questions that come with them. You’re a builder, not just an operator. You’re energized by early-stage environments where the playbook is still forming, and you want to shape the finance function from the ground up. You’re hands-on. You’ll own the model at the spreadsheet level today while designing the systems and team that replace manual work tomorrow. You communicate crisply with founders, the board, and non-finance leaders, and you operate with the urgency and ownership of a founding team member. Location San Francisco Compensation Competitive compensation including salary, equity, and performance incentives.