---
title: 'Head of Compute and Capacity - Lithos Ai at Unusual Ventures'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-compute-and-capacity-lithos-ai-unusual-ventures-san-francisco-bdnrpszn7p7t'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-11-04'
---

# Head of Compute and Capacity - Lithos Ai at Unusual Ventures

- **Company:** Unusual Ventures
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-11-04
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-04
- **Apply:** https://jobs.lever.co/unusual/983f9fad-775e-45b0-b083-a86ff0a3c366

## Job description

## About Lithos

Lithos builds the fastest agentic inference on the planet: frontier open models at full precision on standard GPUs. Our engine currently holds top spots on Artificial Analysis for output speed, time to first token and end-to-end latency on models like DeepSeek and Kimi. We serve inference to growing startups as well as FT500 companies through a public API or on their own hardware.

Lithos was founded by Carnegie Mellon computer science professors who spent years turning systems research on inference and GPU virtualization into a product. We are a small team, and this is one of our first ten hires.

## Why this role matters

For an inference company, capacity is existential. Every promise we make on speed, price and uptime depends on having the right compute, in the right place, at the right price, before the demand arrives.

You will own that. This is the most important commercial seat at Lithos after the founders, and it reports directly to them.

## What you’ll do

- Own the multi-year capacity plan. Translate demand forecasts and the model roadmap into GPU, network and data-center requirements, and stay ahead of demand rather than chasing it.

- Run procurement across vendors. Source and negotiate GPU capacity, networking and colocation across neoclouds, colo providers, OEMs and hyperscalers. Build a vendor bench deep enough that no single supplier can hold us hostage.

- Own the commercial terms. Lead contracts end to end: commit profiles, drawdown schedules, pricing, acceptance testing, uptime definitions, service credits, network fabric performance guarantees and SLA remedies. You will take over live, in-flight deals on day one.

- Build a rolling price book and vendor scorecard. Track market pricing, delivery reliability and real-world performance by vendor, region and GPU generation.

- Model total cost of ownership (TCO) per unit of performance. Measure cost per token and cost per GPU-hour against what the hardware actually delivers, and make that the basis for every capacity decision.

- Partner with engineering. Work with our systems and inference teams to make sure the hardware we buy is what our software runs best on, and that acceptance tests prove it.

## What we’re looking for

- 7+ years in compute capacity, infrastructure procurement or data-center commercial roles at a neocloud, colo provider, OEM or channel partner, or a hyperscaler capacity team.

- You have personally negotiated and closed seven-figure-plus infrastructure contracts, including commit structures, drawdowns and SLA remedies, and can walk through one in detail.

- You think and speak in numbers: $/GPU-hour, utilization, power density, delivery lead times, effective cost per unit of performance.

- Working knowledge of current GPU generations, high-speed networking (InfiniBand/RoCE) and what separates a good cluster from an expensive one.

- Comfortable as a team of one at first: building the spreadsheets, the processes and the vendor relationships yourself.

- Nice to have: experience with capacity for AI inference or training workloads, or on the vendor side selling GPU capacity to AI labs.

## About Unusual Ventures

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: A venture capital firm that provides hands-on operational support and a dedicated engagement model to help technical founders of enterprise AI software startups achieve product-market fit.
- **Entity Type**: Private (venture capital fund)
- **Headquarters**: Menlo Park, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2018
- **Founders**: Jyoti Bansal and John Vrionis

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Venture Capital / Financial Services, with a focus on seed-stage enterprise AI software startups.
- **Target customers**: Technical founders of early-stage startups (B2B through founders).
- **Mission or purpose statement**: “Raise the bar for what founders should expect from their venture investors” and give technical founders the best odds of finding product-market fit.

## Products & Services
- **Unusual Venture Capital**: Seed-stage investment in enterprise AI software startups.
- **Unusual Founder Services**: A team of full-time operators embedded with portfolio companies to execute customer discovery, go-to-market strategy, and product-market fit work.
- **Unusual Academy**: An immersive program where founders work side by side with Unusual’s founders and expert operators.
- **Community & Events**: Quarterly founders events, founder academy, monthly intimate dinners with customer prospects, and go-to-market tools.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not applicable (private fund; not publicly disclosed).
- **Key Metric**: 20 employees (as of latest data); 51,647 LinkedIn followers (+16.5% yearly); 10 active job postings (+100% yearly).
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: LPs are primarily non-profits (hospitals, foundations, HBCUs). Portfolio companies include Rime (powers nearly 100 million phone calls/month for clients like Mayo Clinic, Dialpad, Upstart, and Asurion). Co-founder Jyoti Bansal is one of only 16 people to build two companies surpassing $100M in revenue (AppDynamics and Harness).
- **Growth Signals**: Portfolio companies raise follow-on rounds at valuations “significantly above industry averages.” The firm has seen a 100% increase in job postings year-over-year.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Full-time operator model**: Unlike traditional VCs, Unusual embeds dedicated operators who do the work alongside founders, not just advise.
- **Concentrated portfolio**: Makes a small number of investments each year, giving each founder full attention.
- **Proven founders**: Jyoti Bansal (AppDynamics, Harness) and John Vrionis (30+ billion-dollar outcomes) bring deep first-hand experience.
- **The Unusual Method**: A purpose-built framework for product-market fit, refined through thousands of customer conversations.
- **LP alignment**: LPs are primarily non-profits, creating a “forces for good” ethos.

## Strategic Focus
- Continue investing in seed-stage enterprise AI software startups.
- Expand the Unusual Method and Founder Services to increase portfolio success rates.
- Build a close-knit, supportive founder community to drive repeatable PMF.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: “Forces for good” – employees work with a mission-driven team committed to founders through the hard phases. 5.0/5.0 employer rating (1 review) with high marks for work-life balance, compensation, and career growth.
- **Work environment**: Small team (20 people) with high impact. Offices in Menlo Park (HQ) and San Francisco; team also distributed across the US and Australia. Remote/hybrid policy not explicitly stated, but the presence of multiple offices suggests flexibility.
- **Notable perks**: Opportunity to work alongside top technical founders and industry veterans; direct involvement in the product-market fit process; exposure to a concentrated portfolio of cutting-edge AI startups.
- **Career path**: Roles across venture operations, sales, finance, and programs. The firm actively hires for roles that support portfolio companies (e.g., Founding Account Executive, VP of Engineering, Software Engineer) as well as internal functions (e.g., Director of Programs, VP of Sales).

## Sources
1. [unusual.vc](https://www.unusual.vc/our-story/)
2. [unusual.vc](https://www.unusual.vc/team/)
3. [unusual.vc](https://www.unusual.vc/founder-services/)
4. [jobs.lever.co/unusual](https://jobs.lever.co/unusual)
5. [linkedin.com/company/unusualventures](https://linkedin.com/company/unusualventures)

## Other roles at Unusual Ventures

- [Founding Account Executive - Lithos Ai](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-account-executive-lithos-ai-unusual-ventures-san-francisco-hrkth7a4vxs7) — San Francisco, CA
- [Founding Product Marketer - Lithos Ai](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-product-marketer-lithos-ai-unusual-ventures-san-francisco-4mvpgm8df3dg) — San Francisco, CA
- [Senior Portfolio Analytics & Investment Associate](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-portfolio-analytics-investment-associate-unusual-ventures-menlo-park-mejxhtmfn2a0) — Menlo Park, CA
- [AI Engineer - Unusual Ventures](https://feeny.ai/job/ai-engineer-unusual-ventures-unusual-ventures-san-francisco-7enknyqqcnch) — San Francisco, CA
- [Staff/Senior Software Engineer, Document Intelligence & Data Infrastructure (Helios)](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-senior-software-engineer-document-intelligence-data-infrastructure-helios-athna9wvddyx) — New York, NY
- [Staff/Senior Software Engineer, Agent Engineering (Helios)](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-senior-software-engineer-agent-engineering-helios-unusual-ventures-new-ack6gaeyypmk) — New York, NY
- [Founding Account Executive - Roboto AI](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-account-executive-roboto-ai-unusual-ventures-seattle-1z2tsdepcdgx) — Seattle, WA