The posting
Playground Global is a venture capital firm backing the most technically ambitious founders working at the edge of engineering and science. With over $1.7 billion under management, Playground invests in early-stage companies defining the future of next-generation compute, industrial transformation, and engineered biology.
We’re hiring a Senior Business Intelligence Analyst to figure out what internal tools our team needs across investing, fundraising, and finance and to build and ship them, using modern AI tooling to move fast. The hard part isn’t writing the code; it’s talking to the people who’ll use these tools, deciding what’s actually worth building, and steering the build so it’s secure, scalable, and genuinely adopted.
The position requires strong product judgment, stakeholder communication, and a software-engineering foundation.
WHAT YOU’LL DO
FIGURING OUT WHAT TO BUILD
- Work with the investment, fundraising, and finance teams to learn how each group actually operates and where software and AI can remove friction.
- Turn competing needs into a clear, prioritized roadmap that addresses everyone’s core concerns.
BUILDING & SHIPPING IT
- Ship internal tools end to end, from idea to daily use, mostly by orchestrating AI and existing software rather than building everything from scratch.
- Drive AI-assisted development with the engineering judgment to keep implementations secure, maintainable, and scalable.
- Own the security and reliability of tools that touch sensitive fund, LP, and portfolio data.
- Evaluate new software and AI products, test what’s promising, and adopt what earns its place.
DATA & REPORTING PRIORITIES
- Portfolio & LP Intelligence: Build robust, single-source-of-truth portfolio dashboards for internal leadership and LPs, bringing real-time visibility to fund performance, valuations, and distribution metrics.
- Investor Relations Engagement: Partner with the IR team to optimize our CRM and data workflows, ensuring seamless tracking, more responsive LP communication, and institutional-grade reporting.
- Pipeline & Deal Analytics: Establish scalable monitoring and analytics across the deal pipeline to give the investment team clear, actionable visibility into active opportunities.
- Network Sourcing & Market Intelligence: Unlock insights from firm-wide network connections to enhance diligence workflows, expand coverage of early-stage opportunities, and power data-driven investment decisions.
WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE (6-12 MONTHS IN)
- You’ve met with every team, mapped their workflows, and shipped one or two tools that people use every day.
- The firm has a clear, prioritized roadmap of internal tools, with the highest-friction problems already solved.
- There’s a secure, repeatable way to build, evaluate, and adopt new software and AI across the firm and you own it.
SKILLS & TRAITS
- A track record of shipping products people use: You’ve taken software from “what do people actually need?” to “they use it every day,” and can point to specific things you’ve shipped. This is the bar that matters most.
- You have 4+ years of experience building and shipping software or products in a fast-paced environment. Working at a venture capital or equivalent financial institution is not required but helpful.
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Business, a comparable discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
- Strong stakeholder and communication skills: You draw out real needs (often different from what people ask for), align competing priorities, and keep non-technical partners with you.
- A software-engineering foundation: Enough hands-on background to make sound architectural calls, direct AI build tools well, and ensure things are built securely and at scale. You don’t need to be a full-time engineer.
- Fluent with modern AI tooling, with good judgment about where it helps and where it doesn’t.
- Comfort in a finance or investment setting: Enough grasp of how a fund and its data work to be credible with the CFO and investment team; deep finance expertise isn’t required.
- Bonus: genuine curiosity about deep tech; compute, automation, energy, and biology.
The job is based in Palo Alto, California, and is not eligible for remote status. Playground has a hybrid work arrangement, we encourage you to work from our Palo Alto office as often as possible, generally at least 3 days per week (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday).
The annual salary range is $150,000 to $175,000. This range represents the low and high end of this California-based position’s anticipated salary range. The salary will depend on numerous factors such as experience, knowledge, and skills.
Applicants must be authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis. This position is not eligible for new H-1B visa sponsorship; however, candidates seeking a transfer of an existing H-1B visa, who have already been counted against the H-1B cap, will be considered.
We believe great ideas come from diverse perspectives, and we’re committed to building a team that reflects the world we live in. If you’re passionate about our work, we welcome applicants from all backgrounds and experiences and encourage individuals of all identities to apply.
E-Verify Participation
Playground Global participates in E-Verify. This means we will provide the Social Security Administration (SSA) and, if necessary, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), with information from each new employee's Form I-9 to confirm work authorization. For more information on E-Verify, including your rights and responsibilities, please see the E-Verify Participation Poster https://www.e-verify.gov/sites/default/files/everify/posters/EVerifyParticipationPoster.pdf and Right to Work Poster https://www.e-verify.gov/sites/default/files/everify/posters/IER_RightToWorkPoster%20Eng_Es.pdf.
