Parasail

Compensation

Full Description

About Parasail Parasail provides ultra-low-latency inference infrastructure for AI companies, sourcing GPU capacity from a global network of vendors and optimizing it for performance, reliability, and cost. We orchestrate and manage an elastic, multi-vendor GPU fleet to support real-time AI applications at massive scale. We are hiring a Director of Operations to own our capacity strategy, vendor sourcing, utilization optimization, and the financial performance of our GPU fleet. This is a foundational role that directly shapes Parasail’s cost structure, margins, reliability, and ability to scale. Role Overview As the Director of Operations, you will lead GPU supply-side operations across multiple vendors, zones, and contract types (on-demand, short-term, committed use). You will ensure Parasail always has the right capacity in the right regions at the right cost — maintaining strong utilization while preserving a healthy reserve for demand spikes and vendor outages. You will partner closely with Engineering on automations, fleet optimization, and monitoring tools, and with Finance/Product on pricing alignment and margin improvements. This role blends strategy, analytics, finance, operations, and vendor management. Key Responsibilities Fleet Strategy & Capacity Planning Own the strategy for Parasail’s vendor-sourced GPU fleet across regions and vendors. Build forecasting models to predict demand, burst behavior, seasonality, and reserve requirements. Determine the optimal mix of on-demand, committed, and short-term contracts to maximize flexibility and margin. Maintain capacity buffers to protect against vendor outages, degraded performance, or sudden customer spikes. Ensure utilization targets are met — strong, consistent usage without over-committing spend. Vendor & Supplier Relationship Management Source, evaluate, and manage relationships with GPU infrastructure vendors and cloud capacity providers. Negotiate pricing, SLAs, commitments, contractual flexibility, and scaling terms. Build a multi-vendor redundancy strategy to minimize single-provider risk. Create vendor scorecards to evaluate pricing competitiveness, reliability, latency, responsiveness, and alignment with Parasail needs. Identify emerging vendors, negotiate trial capacity, and assess cost–performance tradeoffs. Utilization Optimization & Operations Automation Track real-time utilization across the entire fleet; identify and address cost inefficiencies and idle capacity. Partner with Engineering to build and refine automations for capacity acquisition, scaling, rebalancing, failovers, and cost controls. Develop policies and processes for lifecycle management of vendor-sourced instances. Implement tooling and dashboards to monitor: utilization cost per GPU hour vendor latency / performance error/outage risks margin impact by contract type Financial Modeling & Margin Optimization Model and monitor GPU unit economics: cost per GPU-hr, marginal cost, blended vendor rates, cost leakage. Partner with Finance & Product to align customer pricing with underlying vendor economics. Recommend improvements to pricing, contract mix, or capacity strategy to expand gross margin. Provide monthly/quarterly reporting on supply-side cost trends and margin performance. Identify margin expansion levers: renegotiation, shifting vendors, rebalancing contracts, automating scaling, improving utilization. Cross-Functional Leadership Work directly with Engineering on fleet design, reliability, scaling automation, and cost controls. Collaborate with Product on pricing and understanding workload patterns. Support Sales & GTM with capacity availability insights for large customer deals. Advise leadership on strategic supply-side risks, mitigations, and opportunities. Establish the foundation for a future operations organization as Parasail grows. What You Bring Required 7+ years in operations, cloud infrastructure, procurement, finance, supply chain, or vendor management roles. Experience managing cloud/HPC/GPU vendors or other infrastructure capacity providers. Exceptional analytical skills — strong modeling, forecasting, scenario planning. Demonstrated negotiation skill with technical vendors or cloud providers. Proven ability to manage costs, optimize margins, and improve operational efficiency. Strong cross-functional communication; able to partner with engineering and leadership. Comfortable in fast-moving, high-stakes, high-ambiguity environments. Preferred Experience with AI infrastructure, GPU cloud platforms, bare-metal GPU providers, or real-time compute. Familiarity with utilization algorithms, workflow schedulers, or GPU orchestration systems. Experience building or using internal dashboards (SQL, Grafana, Looker, etc.) for capacity insights. Startup experience or background in high-growth, operationally complex environments. Why Join Parasail Own a mission-critical function that directly drives Parasail’s economics and scalability. Shape the vendor-sourced GPU infrastructure strategy for one of the fastest-moving companies in the AI ecosystem. Work closely with a world-class engineering team building real-time AI systems. High impact, high visibility role with significant autonomy. Competitive compensation, meaningful equity, and a chance to build a function from the ground up.