Strategic Finance, Compute

About the Team

The Infrastructure Strategy team ensures OpenAI’s global compute footprint is financially sound, operationally scalable, and strategically positioned for the path to superintelligence. We work across engineering, strategy, operations, and finance to structure OpenAI’s infrastructure strategy and investments to scale compute.

About the Role

Compute is a key lever for OpenAI and AI progress. We are seeking a Strategic Finance Compute Lead to provide finance leadership for our compute and infrastructure spend and play a significant role in shaping our long-term compute strategy. You will play a critical role developing financial models for all areas of compute, analyzing spend patterns, and providing critical insights to optimize and plan for our future compute needs. This role will be a key partner to our scaling and supercomputing engineering teams providing financial expertise and guidance to optimize our capacity investments and drive strategic decision-making, while collaborating with other members of the finance organization to align our compute strategy with broader financial considerations.

This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.

In this role, you will:

• Own and develop financial models across different elements of compute (GPUs, CPUs, storage and networking)

• Lead strategic financial analysis for long-term capacity initiatives, working closely with scaling and supercomputing engineering teams

• Maintain deep expertise on compute contract terms, pricing structures and optimization opportunities

• Serve as a partner to FP&A and strategic finance teams, aligning compute and infrastructure with broader financial and business strategies

• Create high-quality Exec and Board-facing presentations

• Stay abreast of market trends and competitive dynamics to inform and improve our infrastructure strategy

You might thrive in this role if you:

• 5+ years of experience across strategic finance, private / growth equity, investment banking, strategy & operations, and/or business development with 3+ years of finance operating experience at a high-growth technology company

• Experience partnering with engineering and product teams to provide financial analysis and insights to critical strategic decisions

• Good understanding of cloud technology and compute infrastructure

• Exceptionally strong analytical, financial modeling, and written and oral communication skills

• Demonstrated track record of thoughtful investment decisions

• Experience driving operational outcomes under ambitious deadlines

• Exceptionally strong relationship building, business judgment, and communication skills

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity. 

We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with applicable law, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, conf