---
title: 'Strategic Finance, Compute at OpenAI'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/strategic-finance-compute-openai-san-francisco-qcr8s6rxdwbq'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-11-05'
---

# Strategic Finance, Compute at OpenAI

- **Company:** [OpenAI](https://feeny.ai/companies/openai)
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Compensation:** $234k–$260k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Posted:** 2026-09-15
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-05
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/b4196174-9cc3-487d-9d21-848bc283b80f/application

**Skills:** Financial modeling, Cloud technology, Compute infrastructure, Technical cost analysis, FP&A

> The Strategic Finance Lead provides finance leadership for OpenAI's compute and infrastructure spend, developing financial models and analyzing spend patterns to optimize capacity investments. This role partners with engineering teams to shape long-term compute strategy and supports FP&A in aligning infrastructure w...

## Job description

## About the Team

The Compute & Infrastructure Strategy team handles strategy and execution of OpenAI’s compute roadmap. This team’s key responsibilities span financial analysis & reporting, capacity planning, commercial and business development, and strategic partnerships. We partner across the business to allocate and deploy our resources for the highest impact outcomes.

## About the Role

Compute is central to OpenAI’s roadmap and vision. We are seeking a candidate to support financial and strategic work across our compute and infrastructure portfolio.

This is a finance generalist role that includes core FP&A responsibilities as well as having the ability to understand investment analysis, commercial decision support, and strategic planning. You will partner closely with deal teams, technical and finance teams, Corporate FP&A and help shape decisions about how OpenAI invests in and manages compute.

In this role, own and drive all financial planning, forecasting & close processes for the Compute & Infrastructure org by partnering with various stakeholders across Finance, Accounting, Tax and Engineering. You will play a critical role in planning and forecasting the company’s largest and most complex cost center ( Compute & Infrastructure )

In this role, you will:

- Support & scale all FP&A functions including planning, forecasting, close, budgeting, reporting, and variance analysis across compute and infrastructure
- Build and maintain driver based high level financial models across different elements of compute, including GPUs, CPUs, storage, networking, data centers, and power to support rapid / iterative short term and long term planning.
- Consolidate various investment analysis across programs and create high-quality analyses, recommendations, and Exec and Board-facing presentations
- Support business partners across compute infrastructure, FP&A, and strategic finance
- Drive the improvement of the team’s processes, tools, and ways of working, and identify opportunities to scale effectively to support OpenAIs ambitious growth plans
- Support & scale all FP&A functions including planning, forecasting, close, budgeting, reporting, and variance analysis across compute and infrastructure
- Coordinate closely with Corporate FP&A on timelines and process
- Develop frameworks for investment trade-offs to guide executive decision making
- Partner with Accounting to ensure accurate classification of infrastructure spend (OpEx vs CapEx)
- Translate complex infrastructure costs into clear insights for leadership
- Effectively use internal AI tools to automate reporting/processes with a goal to improve efficiency and turn around time.

You might thrive in this role if you have:

- 7+ years in a finance and strategy operating role at a high-growth technology company
- Background in infrastructure, data centers, compute, cloud, semiconductors, or a related industry strongly preferred
- Strong financial modeling skills, particularly in capacity planning, unit economics, and scenario analysis under uncertainty
- Exceptional analytical, financial modeling, and written and verbal communication skills
- Proven ability to learn quickly and succeed in unfamiliar operating environments
- Comfort independently structuring ambiguous problems and working through incomplete information
- Track record of producing high-quality work under ambitious deadlines
- Proficiency in Excel/Sheets, SQL, and BI tools (e.g., Tableau); experience with planning systems like Anaplan is a plus
- Effectiveness in multidisciplinary, cross-functional environments
- Familiarity with data systems, analytical tools, and large datasets preferred but not required
- Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience; technical undergraduate degree preferred but not required

## 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](https://cdn.openai.com/policies/eeo-policy-statement.pdf). Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates. 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, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations. To notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant, please submit a report through [this form](https://form.asana.com/?d=57018692298241&k=5MqR40fZd7jlxVUh5J-UeA). No response will be provided to inquiries unrelated to job posting compliance. We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this [link](https://form.asana.com/?k=bQ7w9h3iexRlicUdWRiwvg&d=57018692298241). [OpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy](https://cdn.openai.com/policies/global-employee-and-contractor-privacy-policy.pdf) At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.

## About OpenAI

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company with a mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits all of humanity.
- **Entity Type**: Private – structured as a nonprofit parent (OpenAI Foundation) governing a for-profit public benefit corporation (OpenAI Group). The company has confidentially submitted a draft S-1 registration statement to the SEC, signaling a potential future IPO.
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, USA
- **Founded**: 2015
- **Founders**: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, John Schulman, Wojciech Zaremba, and others

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Artificial intelligence research and deployment
- **Target customers**: B2B (enterprises via API and platform), B2C (ChatGPT users), and developers (API, open-source models)
- **Mission**: To ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) – AI systems that are generally smarter than humans – benefits all of humanity.

## Products & Services
- **[ChatGPT](https://openai.com/chatgpt)**: Conversational AI assistant available via web and mobile, used by consumers and integrated into enterprise workflows.
- **[GPT-4 API](https://openai.com/product)**: Large language model accessed via API for developers to build AI-powered applications (text generation, summarization, code assistance, etc.).
- **[DALL-E](https://openai.com/dall-e-3)**: Image generation model that creates images from natural language descriptions.
- **[Whisper](https://openai.com/research/whisper)**: Open-source speech recognition system.
- **[OpenAI Agents](https://openai.com/)**: Emerging product category focused on autonomous AI agents that can perform tasks on behalf of users (announced June 2026).

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed in the provided sources. Widely reported in the press at ~$300 billion as of early 2026 (post-funding round), but this figure is not confirmed by OpenAI’s official materials.
- **Key Metric**: Total funding exceeds $13 billion from Microsoft and other investors. The company has also confidentially filed a draft S-1 with the SEC (see [openai.com](https://openai.com/) – “Confidential submission of draft S-1”).
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Microsoft (strategic partner and largest investor), with additional participation from Thrive Capital, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and others.
- **Growth Signals**: Active hiring with 721 open roles posted; expansion into agent-based products; confidential IPO filing; continued deployment of frontier models.

## Competitive Advantages
- **First-mover & brand recognition**: ChatGPT became the fastest-growing consumer app in history, establishing OpenAI as the household name in generative AI.
- **Research leadership**: Consistently publishes cutting-edge research (GPT-4, DALL-E 3, Whisper, etc.) and attracts top AI talent.
- **Compute & infrastructure**: Exclusive partnership with Microsoft provides massive cloud computing resources (Azure) for training and inference.
- **Unique governance structure**: The nonprofit parent ensures mission alignment (AGI benefiting humanity) while the for-profit arm can raise capital and scale products.

## Strategic Focus
- **Safe AGI development**: Continued emphasis on safety research, alignment, and responsible deployment (e.g., safety systems, model provenance).
- **Enterprise expansion**: Growing ChatGPT Enterprise and API offerings for businesses.
- **Agentic AI**: Building autonomous agents that can “transform work” (announced June 2026).
- **IPO preparation**: Confidential S-1 filing indicates intent to go public, which will require increased financial transparency and governance maturity.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture & values**: OpenAI’s stated values include “Humanity first,” “Act with humility,” “Feel the AGI,” and “Ship joy.” Operating principles emphasize agency, creativity, rapid iteration, and intense focus.
- **Benefits**: Competitive health insurance, mental healthcare support, 24-week paid birth-parent leave (plus 20 weeks for other parents), generous PTO, annual learning & development stipend, daily meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner), and a domestic conference budget.
- **Work environment**: Hybrid/office-based (San Francisco headquarters). The company offers a residency program for researchers and engineers transitioning into AI.
- **Impact**: Employees work directly on frontier AI models that shape the industry and society. The mission-driven nature attracts talent passionate about AGI’s societal implications.

## Sources
1. [OpenAI About Page](https://openai.com/about/)
2. [OpenAI Careers Page](https://openai.com/careers/)
3. [OpenAI Job Search](https://openai.com/careers/search)
4. [OpenAI Homepage](https://openai.com/)

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