Strategic Finance Engagement Lead | Climate Tech and Energy Transition Startups

Remote

Summary

Role: Lead strategic financial advisory engagements with venture-backed climate and energy-transition startups.
Preferred experience: 7-12 years (or 1-3 years post-MBA); experience in top-tier investing/banking/consulting, or senior finance roles at a venture-backed company
Seniority: Senior Manager or Director, depending on candidate experience level
Compensation: $180,000–$220,000 base + 20% performance bonus target + participation in shadow client equity program
Location: Remote, US timezones

Overview

Planetary Scale Advisors partners with climate and energy-transition companies as their strategic finance arm, working alongside founders from seed through growth on the questions that shape their destiny. We’ve helped our clients raise hundreds of millions in venture funding and work through their hardest moments on their path to scale.

The climate tech founders we work with are navigating some of the most consequential decisions on the company-building journey: which business model to adopt, how to allocate scarce capital across competing priorities, when to raise and on what terms, and which trade-offs to make along the way. They need a thought partner and analytical lead who can own the financial picture and advise on the decisions it informs. We’re hiring someone to do exactly that.

The Role

You’ll lead client engagements across a portfolio of 3-4 climate tech companies. That means deeply understanding each founder’s business, identifying the drivers that determine success or failure, building financial models that drive key decisions and inform board meetings and fundraising conversations, and establishing the weekly and monthly rhythms that give them real visibility into their financial position and outlook. You’re the person they call when they need to think through a hard decision, and the person who makes sure the numbers behind that decision are airtight.

You’ll start by working closely alongside our founder on your first 1-2 engagements, learning PSA’s approach to client advisory. Within 3-6 months, you’ll take the front seat on engagements — owning the client relationship directly and coordinating junior team members while our founder supports you as a thought partner and subject-matter expert when needed.

You’ll build and own the financial architecture for each client engagement — three-statement projection models, scenario analyses, and KPI dashboards that founders use to steer their companies towards success and bring into their most important conversations with investors and boards.
You’ll lead fundraising preparation and capital strategy — helping founders decide when and how to raise, preparing materials that hold up under investor scrutiny, and sourcing alternatives like venture debt and equipment leasing when they’re the better path.
You’ll build the cadence that gives founders financial clarity — weekly check-ins, monthly reviews, and the kind of proactive analysis that surfaces issues before they become problems.
You’ll oversee the finance function across your client portfolio — coordinating PSA associates, client staff, and third-party bookkeepers to ensure clean, on-time financial operations.
You’ll advise founders on the strategic questions that sit behind the numbers — resource allocation, commercialization pathways, revenue models, and the decisions that determine whether breakthrough technology becomes a scalable business.

About You

You hold yourself to a high standard, and you want to work somewhere that does the same. A few things that matter here:

You make the people around you more effective. Whether that’s a founder, a teammate, or a client’s board members — you simplify complexity, anticipate needs, and make someone’s day easier. Founders should feel like their problems got smaller after talking to you.
You think before you build. The most valuable thing you produce isn’t a deliverable — it’s the thinking behind it. You pause to understand the real problem, consider what context matters, and ask the question others skip. The discipline to think deeply before executing is often what separates good advice from great advice.
Accuracy is your baseline. Our work directly informs high-stakes decisions — a wrong number can undermine a founder’s credibility at the worst possible moment. Stress-testing every number is second nature to you.
You take ownership by default. When something needs doing, you do it. When something looks wrong, you dig deeper. You don’t just hope things work out, you ask “What are we missing?” and “How could this go wrong?” to ensure they do.
You learn fast across unfamiliar domains. Working across multiple climate tech companies in different verticals means the context shifts constantly. Everything we do is analytical and rigorous, but the subject matter evolves fast. That requires someone who’s genuinely energized by learning, not just willing to do it.

Beyond that, for this role specifically:

You have real financial acumen and modeling fluency. You build models that hold up under investor scrutiny — clean structure, clear assumptions, defensible logic. This level of fluency typically comes from investment banking, top-tier management consulting with quantitative depth, Big Four advisory, or a Director-level strategic finance role at a venture-backed company.
You know how to serve clients in high-stakes environments. You manage up, anticipate questions, and know when to push back. You understand what makes a founder’s life easier and what creates unnecessary friction. This instinct typically comes from top-tier consulting, banking, or advisory environments.
You care about this work specifically. You’ve decided that impact and working on something you can be proud of is a first-order consideration. You’re drawn to climate and the energy transition because it’s humanity’s biggest challenge, and you want your financial skills deployed where they’ll make the biggest difference.

It helps if you’ve also worked directly with venture-backed founders before, have exposure to fundraising processes from either side of the table, bring familiarity with GAAP sufficient to scrutinize the books and oversee an accounting team, and are excited about building with AI to improve how we work.

Your prior experience will provide a strong foundation, but your ability to learn quickly, navigate ambiguity, and solve novel problems from first principles will be essential for your success.

What makes this different

Working directly with founders. You’ll work with people building some of the most consequential companies in climate and energy — often as one of their most trusted advisors. You’re energized by that role and the opportunity for impact it brings.
High-tempo, collaborative team. We move at the speed of the startups we work with. For those coming from a stable corporate environment, the pace of change can be daunting. We pride ourselves on our collaborative culture and apprenticeship model, so even when you’re in the hot seat you’ll never feel unsupported.
A share in the upside. You’ll see the direct impact of your work — in the decisions founders make, the capital they raise, and the feedback we get from their boards. Our shadow client equity program means you also have a long-term stake in the financial success of the companies you help build.

We’re fully remote with occasional travel to client sites and to NYC for Climate Week each September. Our offer includes performance bonus, client equity exposure, 401K with match, and 30 days of PTO.

Planetary Scale is an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate candidates on their merits and welcome applications from people of all backgrounds.