Director of Finance VC-Backed Sovereign AI Infrastructure Scale-Up | Berlin

Director of Finance | VC-Backed Sovereign AI Infrastructure Scale-Up | Berlin

The Client

Harmonic is delighted to have been retained by a Berlin founded AI infrastructure company building the compute layer European companies will run AI on. In little over a year it has built one of Europe's best performing AI cloud stacks, combining serverless and dedicated inference with its own GPU management and orchestration platform, and it now processes over 2 billion tokens a day with revenue growing 30 to 40% month on month.

Demand for compute is compounding, only a small fraction of Europe's AI compute is European-owned, and through the EU AI Act, GDPR and NIS 2 sovereignty has moved from a boardroom issue to a legal one. Unusually for a software-led business, the company secures, operates and finances its own GPU estate through structures with institutional capital providers, with over $200m of infrastructure financing in place or in execution and $500m to be deployed in 2027. Backed by leading European VCs, it is now raising a large Series A.

The Role

Reporting to the CFO, a capital markets specialist who has raised over $1.7bn in his career, the Director of Finance will own the finance function below capital markets: accounting, finance operations, FP&A and strategic finance, and the teams behind each. The CFO continues to lead fundraising and the financing programmes behind the compute estate; you own everything else.

Finance today is the CFO working with an outsourced accounting provider, so this is a build from the ground up. The first priority is to bring accounting in-house, take full control of the stack across the entities and start hiring, accounting and finance operations first, then FP&A. The complexity is arriving as fast as the growth, with SPVs, asset-backed financing and several structures running in parallel on top of fast-scaling usage-based revenue.

This is a player-coach role. You will do the work yourself, from the first close to the accounting for each new financing structure and the first forecasting model, while building a high-performance team around you. Few finance roles combine a function built from scratch, technical asset-finance accounting and a business scaling at this pace; the goal is a finance function the CFO and founders can rely on without being involved day to day.

Year One Success Looks Like

• Accounting brought in-house and under control, with a reliable close and clean statutory accounts across entities.
• The accounting, finance operations and FP&A teams hired and running.
• An ERP selected and live, with the surrounding finance systems in place ahead of volume.
• SPV and asset-finance structures accounted for and managed properly, with lender reporting that holds up.
• Budgeting, forecasting and board reporting that the leadership team uses to run the business.

Key Responsibilities

• Transition accounting from the outsourced provider and own month-end close, controls, statutory accounts, audit and tax across the German and Swiss entities.
• Set up and run the accounting for GPU financing, including SPVs, asset finance and leases, depreciation and consolidation, with several structures live at once.
• Own covenant compliance and lender reporting, and partner with the CFO on new structures so the accounting is right from the first deal.
• Own usage-based billing, collections and finance operations as volumes scale.
• Select and implement the ERP and surrounding finance systems, with automation as the default.
• Build and lead best in class FP&A, owning budgeting, forecasting and board reporting.
• Build unit economics by GPU and by customer segment, and turn them into decisions on pricing, capacity and growth.
• Hire, develop and lead the accounting, finance operations and FP&A teams, setting the standard by working alongside them.
• A track record of building and leading an accounting or finance function at a startup or scale-up through fast growth.
• The seniority to hire and run a team independently and own the function without hands-on support.
• Technical credibility on accounting alongside FP&A and strategic finance.
• Exceptional analytical ability and the pace to keep up with a business scaling faster than its processes.
• Qualified accountant (ACA / ACCA / CIMA, Steuerberater or equivalent).
• IFRS.
• Asset finance, leasing or other heavy-financing exposure, for example in aviation, vehicles, machinery, energy or hardware.
• A hardware, deep tech or infrastructure background, ideally at a similar company.
• Experience scaling a multi-entity, international business.
• Fluent German.
• Uses AI and automation to run finance workflows.

What This Role Is Not

• Not a pure leadership role. You will be a player-coach, doing the work as well as leading it, particularly in the first year while the team is being built.
• Not an inherited function. There is no in-house team or established process to take over; you will build both.
• Not a purely strategic or FP&A role. Hands-on technical accounting, including SPVs and asset finance, sits at the core of it.
• Not a capital markets role. Fundraising and the financing programmes stay with the CFO; you make sure they are accounted for and reported properly.
• Not a standard SaaS finance role. Capex, depreciation, asset-backed debt and SPV consolidation behave very differently from subscription accounting.

Salary

€180,000–€220,000 base + significant equity (stock options)

Benefits

Standard benefits package

Location

Berlin, with an in-office culture and flexibility for the right person

Start Date

ASAP, considering notice periods

At Harmonic, we are dedicated to fostering an inclusive and equitable workplace. We actively welcome applications from individuals of all backgrounds and assure you that every candidate will be thoughtfully considered for the roles we represent, without regard to race, religion, gender expression, disability, or sexual orientation.