layiq

/la·yiq/adjective

worthy; deserving; fitting; suitable.

A role, opportunity, or path that merits attention, time, and pursuit.

LAYIQ - Chief Financial Officer at Firecrawl

Equity Range:

Competitive equity. Details shared during the process.

Location:

San Francisco, CA (SF HQ). Hybrid, onsite 3+ days a week.

Job Type:

Full-Time

Experience:

4+ years

Work Authorization:

Must be authorized to work in the United States. We're not able to sponsor US visas right now, though that may change down the line.

About Firecrawl

Firecrawl is the easiest way to turn the web into data AI agents can use. One API call converts any URL into clean, LLM-ready markdown or structured data. It's the boring-hard problem everyone building with LLMs eventually hits, solved.

In September 2026, we raised a $75M Series B led by Smash Capital, and we're spending it building the largest repository of knowledge in the world. We have 187k+ GitHub stars, putting us in the top 40 repositories of all time, and developers, agents, and category-defining AI companies build on us every day. Growth like this is rare, and we're just getting started.

We're a small team punching far above our weight. Everyone here owns a real piece of the product and company, end to end, and runs it themselves. No hiding behind process or headcount.

This is a place for people who want to work at the frontier: an AI company building the infrastructure other AI companies run on, not one bolting AI onto an existing product. We move fast, go deep, and are building the tools superintelligence will rely on to gather data from the web. That library is called Alexandria, and it starts now.

What You'll Do

Own the model and the margin: Build the operating model the founders and board actually use: revenue, margin, headcount, and cash. If the numbers say something we don't want to hear, you say it first
Run pricing economics: Credits, prepaid and pay-as-you-go, plans, enterprise contracts, and discount authority, decided with product and revenue
Deploy the Series B and co-pilot the next raise: Decide how fast we spend and on what. Build the model, data room, and diligence with the CEO so the next round runs better than the last
Treat tokens as a P&L line: Inference is both our cost of goods and how we get work done. Know what it costs, what it returns, and where the next dollar of compute goes
Build the finance function: Close and revenue recognition for a usage-based business, audit, board and investor reporting, tax, treasury, spend, and equity admin. Table stakes: run them well and make them as automated as any finance team you've seen. Hire a controller and an FP&A lead when the time is right

What We're Looking For

You're an AI super user: Non-negotiable. You run AI across your own work today and have opinions about where it fails
You've run finance and owned a balance sheet: CFO or VP Finance owning the whole function at a venture-backed company, through a priced round and the growth after it
You're hands-on: You build the model yourself, you can close the books if you have to, and you work without a team on day one
You've been the CEO's copilot on a fundraise: The model, the data room, the diligence, and a straight read on terms
You think from first principles about scaling a company in a new era: Usage-based revenue, real cost of goods, compute as both cost and leverage. The old SaaS playbook doesn't carry over, and you know why

What We're NOT Looking For

The fundraising CFO: Great in the data room, hazy on where last month's margin went
The pure controller: Brilliant on the close, uninterested in the capital strategy, board, and pricing work
The budget cop: Measures success in spend blocked and deals slowed
The big-company operator: Has never built a model from a blank sheet or hired the first person on a team
The SaaS-only thinker: Believes usage-based revenue is seat-based SaaS with variable invoices
The compute skeptic: Treats inference spend as a line to cut rather than a line to understand. Here it's how we make money and how we get work done
The waiter: Needs a full team, an ERP, and a closed quarter before giving the founders a number
A Note On Pace
We operate at an absurd level of urgency because the window for what we're building won't stay open forever. If that excites you, keep reading. If it doesn't, no hard feelings, but this role probably isn't for you.
If you've spent a career making other companies' numbers work and want to build finance for one at the moment its economics are the hardest and most interesting in AI infrastructure, this is the one. It won't be boring.

Own a piece:

Gain competitive equity in what you're helping build

Generous PTO:

15 days mandatory, anything after 24 days, just ask (holidays excluded). Take the time you need to recharge

Parental leave:

12 weeks fully paid, for all parents

Wellness stipend:

$100 USD/month for the gym, therapy, massages, or whatever keeps you human

Learning & Development:

Expense up to $1,000 USD/year toward anything that helps you grow professionally

Team offsites:

A change of scenery, minus the trust falls

Sabbatical:

3 paid months off after 4 years, do something fun and new

Available to US-based full-time employees

Full coverage, no red tape:

Medical, dental, and vision (100% for employees, 50% for partner and kids). No weird loopholes, just care that works

Life & Disability insurance:

Employer-paid basic life and AD&D, short-term disability, and long-term disability. Coverage for life's curveballs

Virtual care and a health guide:

Teladoc for the couch doctor visit, plus Rightway to answer coverage questions and fight billing errors for you

Mental health:

Talkspace, therapy and psychiatry on your schedule

Fertility and family building:

Carrot, covering you and your partner

EAP:

Free confidential counseling, legal and financial consults, and online will prep through Guardian

401(k) plan:

Retirement might be a ways off, but future-you will thank you

Pre-tax benefits:

HSA, FSA, and commuter benefits to help your wallet out a bit

Supplemental options:

Extra life and AD&D, accident, critical illness, hospital indemnity, plus pet, legal, and identity protection through MetLife

Available to SF-based employees

SF HQ perks:

Snacks, drinks, team lunches, intense ping pong, and peak startup energy

E-Bike transportation:

A loaner electric bike to get you around the city, on us

Interview Process

Application Review:

Send us your resume and a short note on why this excites you. Tell us about a call you made with the numbers that the founders or board didn't want to hear, how you delivered it, and what happened next.

Intro Chat (~25 min):

A quick conversation to get to know each other before we go deep. What you've been running, what drew you to Firecrawl, and what you want next. Time for your questions too.

Case Chat (~45 min):

We'll work through a real problem from our world: a pricing change where cost per request is moving underneath it, a margin question with no clean answer, or a capital deployment tradeoff between headcount and infrastructure. How you'd reason, what you'd measure, and what you'd tell the founders. Come ready to think out loud. We care how you reason, not whether you know the market multiple.

Modeling Exercise (Paid, ~3 hours):

One scoped, anonymized dataset. You build the analysis and write the one-page read you'd hand the founders: what the numbers say, what you'd do about it, and what you'd want to know next. Keep it short. We'll read every word.

Founder Chats (~30 min each):

Time with each of our founders on culture, pace, ownership, and how you'd work together. Time for your questions too.

References:

We'll want to talk to a CEO you've served, a board member or investor who saw your board work, and someone who reported to you.

Decision:

We move fast after references.

If you want to own the economics of the infrastructure layer of AI, and build finance for a company nobody has written the playbook for, you should join us.

👉 Apply now.

Chief Financial Officer

Employer job description

Salary Range: