Product Finance Director, R&D Capital Allocation & Engineering Operations

<p data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><small>(GAQ427R231)</small></p> <p data-renderer-start-pos="2729">&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>About the role</strong>&nbsp;</p> <p>As Databricks scales at unprecedented velocity, how we invest our R&amp;D capital—both human and compute—is critical to our scale. We are looking for a Product Finance leader to own R&amp;D capital allocation and engineering operations. You will be a key finance partner to our senior Engineering and Product Operations leaders, with a mandate that spans product-level R&amp;D ROI, global workforce and location strategy, and the rapidly evolving economics of AI-enabled software development.</p> <p><strong>The impact you will have</strong></p> <ul> <li><strong>Drive product-level ROI and R&amp;D capital allocation</strong></li> <ul> <li>Establish frameworks to measure product-level ROI across a fast-moving platform like Databricks where engineering velocity is extremely high.</li> <li>Operationalize ROI metrics so they directly inform product investment and resource allocation decisions.</li> </ul> <li><strong>Define engineering economics in the AI era</strong></li> <ul> <li>Partner with Engineering to model how AI developer tooling and internal token spend scale alongside headcount, quantifying the tradeoff between human capital and compute capital.</li> <li>Measure the end-to-end cost of AI-enabled engineering, including the second-order impact on cloud spend, and partner with Engineering to optimize investments.</li> </ul> <li><strong>Shape global workforce and location strategy</strong></li> <ul> <li>Drive multi-year headcount planning across global engineering hubs, balancing cost per hire, talent density, and university recruiting pipelines.</li> <li>Partner closely with Workplace and Facilities leadership to synchronize R&amp;D hiring roadmaps with global real estate strategy and multi-year CapEx planning.</li> </ul> <li><strong>Scale R&amp;D finance operations and build the team</strong></li> <ul> <li>Bring system