Strategic Finance Lead, AI Infrastructure & R&D

Build a Safer World.

TRM Labs provides AI-powered intelligence solutions that help public and private sector agencies investigate and disrupt crime. TRM's platforms enable investigators to trace illicit activity, build cases, and construct operating pictures of threat networks. Leading agencies and businesses worldwide rely on TRM to make the world safer and more secure.

The role

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

• How should TRM measure and manage the unit economics of its AI and data-intensive products as usage scales?

• Where should TRM make longer-term infrastructure commitments, and where should it preserve flexibility?

• How should TRM allocate investment across engineering capacity, AI capabilities, product priorities, and infrastructure efficiency?

• When should TRM build internally, use third-party technology, or change how workloads are architected?

• Which operating metrics provide the earliest indication that an R&D investment is—or is not—creating the expected value?

What we're looking for

• 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, P