Strategic Finance Lead, OpenAI for Inference

About the Team

We partner with technical and business leaders to turn advances in AI into useful products and sustainable businesses. Strategic Finance supports complex infrastructure programs by evaluating investment choices, commercial opportunities and operating performance.

About the Role

We are looking for a hands-on finance leader with direct experience supporting silicon design or semiconductor development programs. You will own financial models, deal analysis, forecasts and operating reviews, working with engineering, research and commercial teams to translate technical milestones and investment needs into clear business decisions. You will partner with the finance leader on priorities, resource allocation and significant decisions.

In this role, you will:

• Own financial models, budgets, forecasts and performance reporting for priority programs, including headcount and investment tracking.

• Translate silicon development milestones, cost drivers and infrastructure requirements into investment and pricing recommendations.

• Evaluate customer and partner economics, including engineering support, compute, tooling, licensing and contingent commitments.

• Build and maintain customer- and program-level revenue, cost of goods sold, gross margin and cash reporting with Engineering, Finance Operations and Accounting.

• Support deal negotiations and renewals with scenario analysis, proposed terms and clear financial guardrails.

• Present actionable recommendations, coordinate inputs across teams and escalate material risks or unresolved tradeoffs.

You might thrive in this role if you have:

• Direct finance experience supporting silicon design or semiconductor development, including ownership of development investment, program costs, pricing or commercialization models.

• Practical understanding of silicon design and validation milestones, PPA, die and manufacturing economics, and the risks that affect program value.

• Demonstrated ownership of complex financial models, forecasts, deal economics and recurring management reporting.

• Strong quantitative judgment, hands-on modeling and clear communication with technical and commercial stakeholders.

• Curiosity, intellectual honesty and the ability to move ambiguous work forward independently while seeking guidance on consequential decisions.

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.

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...