Strategic Finance Lead, R&D

About this role

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.

TRM is hiring a Strategic Finance Lead, AI & R&D to help decide how the company invests in AI, cloud and compute infrastructure, and the engineering capacity behind its products. You'll be the dedicated finance partner to the CTO and R&D leadership, turning complex usage, billing, and headcount data into recommendations that shape major investment decisions before they're made. Reporting to Pharoah Green, Head of Strategic Finance and FP&A, within the FP&A and Strategic Finance Business Partnership function, you'll design the financial architecture for R&D from the ground up, with AI built into how the work gets done.

The impact you will have:

- Shape how TRM invests in AI, cloud, and compute by building an AI-assisted, driver-based economic model that connects usage and billing data across hundreds of SKUs to forecasts and decisions.

- Lower R&D costs as a % of revenue without slowing product velocity, using AI to surface optimization opportunities in infrastructure spend and partnering with Engineering to act on them.

- Define TRM's AI spend strategy with the Head of AI, using AI-powered analysis to track spend against ROI by tool and workload and to recommend where to commit, consolidate, or build.

- Give R&D leaders an early view of change by owning planning, forecasting, and the headcount capacity model, with automated workflows that flag risks while there is still time to act.

- Influence major infrastructure and R&D commitments by leading investment cases from business case to decision to measurement, with AI-assisted scenario analysis that makes tradeoffs clear.

- Turn R&D performance into a clear executive and board narrative: what changed, why, and which decisions should follow.

- Rebuild R&D finance around AI, automation, and Pigment so more time goes to shaping decisions and less to assembling reports.

What we're looking for:

- 7+ years across strategic finance, FP&A, business operations, or a related role. We care more about the complexity you've owned and the influence you've had than an exact number of years.

- A record of owning consequential work end to end: framing an ambiguous question, structuring the analysis, forming a point of view, and driving a recommendation to action.

- Strong data-informed modeling skills, including driver-based forecasts, investment cases, and capacity models built from incomplete or complex data, accelerated with AI.

- Hands-on experience analyzing cloud, compute, AI, or other usage-based technology costs, and experience partnering with Engineering, Product, Data, AI, or Infrastructure leaders.

- The judgment and communication skills to become a trusted partner to senior technical leaders, challenge assumptions constructively, and explain financial implications in plain language.

- Applied AI fluency: you can show how you've used AI to improve the speed or quality of modeling, research, or recurring workflows, and how you check the reliability of its output.

- Curiosity to learn technical systems quickly and translate how AI products and modern infrastructure scale into financial insight.

About the Team:

- Strategic Finance is a small, high-leverage team that works directly with TRM's leadership on planning, investment decisions, and company-wide strategy.

- Our job isn't just to explain the numbers. We collaborate with leaders to make better decisions, and we hold a high bar for rigor and trust in our work.

- You'll have substantial ownership from day one, direct exposure to the CTO and executive team, and room to shape how R&D finance operates.

- The role is built to scale with its owner. Using AI and automation, you can expand what one person owns, and as the mandate grows there may be an opportunity to build a team.

Team Operating Rhythms:

- We're distributed, not distant: written communication for clarity and context, live time for decisions and collaboration.

- Regular working sessions with the CTO and R&D leaders, plus a monthly R&D cost and forecast review.

- Quarterly planning with Talent and R&D on headcount capacity, and annual planning cycles in Pigment.

- Slack and Notion for async updates; AI tools are part of the daily workflow.

Learn about TRM Speed in this position:

- Within your first 30 days, deliver an initial AI-assisted cloud forecast, focused on GCP with AWS coverage as applicable, that gives R&D leaders their first driver-based view of where infrastructure spend is heading.

- Within your first 60 days, put a defined AI spend strategy in front of the CTO, with a clear recommendation on where to commit, consolidate, or cut.

- Within your first 90 days, have the R&D capacity model integrated into the planning process so hiring decisions and budget move together.

APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS

If you’re interested in joining TRM, we encourage you to apply directly. Every application is reviewed by our Talent team.

Before applying, review the job description carefully and highlight the experience and impact that best demonstrate the required qualifications. Please also provide thoughtful and accurate answers to the application questions, as these will be used to evaluate your qualifications for the role.

If you send your resume directly to someone at TRM, we can’t guarantee it will reach the appropriate hiring team. Applying directly is the best way to ensure you’re considered.

WHAT TO EXPECT FROM OUR INTERVIEW PROCESS

Our process is designed to understand how you think, solve problems, and deliver impact, while giving you the opportunity to evaluate TRM. Most interview processes include a…