Project Manager, Compute Transformation

OpenAI; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

OpenAI, Inc. is seeking a Program Manager, Compute Transformation to lead cross-functional initiatives spanning purchasing, operations, billing, accounting, and FP&A around compute commitments and data center programs.

You will drive problem definition, design scalable processes, and deliver end-to-end solutions across Finance, Infrastructure, Legal, Data, and Engineering. The role is based in San Francisco with a hybrid model requiring 3 days in the office.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in project or program management, finance transformation, infrastructure operations, or enterprise systems delivery in complex, scaled environments.
• Understanding of compute or infrastructure economics and related finance processes, including commitments, usage-based billing, procurement, accruals, cost allocation, and forecasting.
• Experience partnering with software and data engineers to define requirements, resolve tradeoffs, test solutions, and deliver changes into production without direct authority.

Responsibilities

• Own an integrated compute and infra transformation plan: workstreams, milestones, critical dependencies, resources, decision logs, and acceptance criteria. Drive execution from problem definition through production adoption.
• Map current workflows and design scalable processes from demand planning, contracting, delivery & acceptance, receiving & operations, invoicing, payment, and month-end close. Clarify ownership, handoffs, evidence, and exception paths.
• Enable source of truth systems that cover both operational needs and accounting/finance needs for data center construction, operations, and maintenance.
• Drive consistent tracking of contracts, tranches, delivery events, and capacity acceptance. Connect committed spend to provisioned, accepted, allocated, and used capacity to support forecasting and financial review.
• Coordinate reliable ingestion and normalization of cloud service provider usage, billing, invoice, and delivery data. Establish data owners, completeness checks, and traceability to financial outputs.
• Improve compute billing, accrual, and allocation processes through consistent pricing rules, SKU mappings, telemetry and organizational tags, reconciliations, and controlled handling of manual adjustments.
• Partner with application, AI, and data engineers to translate requirements into integrations and automation across contract, procurement, compute data, and finance platforms, with monitoring and governed change controls.
• Align Infrastructure, Finance, Accounting, Procurement, Legal, and Engineering on decisions and dependencies. Manage scope, risks, vendor dependencies, and change requests; escape with clear options and business impact.
• Lead end-to-end testing, UAT, rollout, training, and handoff to operational owners. Define success measures for traceability, data quality, manual effort, exception resolution, close readiness, and adoption.

Skills

Program management

Finance transformation

Infrastructure operations

Cross-functional collaboration

Data analysis

Tools

SQL

Databricks

BI platforms

Job description

About the Team

The Transformation team at OpenAI partners with Finance, Infrastructure, Data, and Engineering to design and scale the business processes and systems that support our growth. Our work combines process design, systems thinking, and operational change to turn fragmented workflows into reliable, repeatable, and well‑controlled operations.

We work as embedded partners to Finance, Accounting, and Operations, shaping priorities and delivering improvements across core business processes. For compute, our focus is an accurate, connected view of contractual obligations, delivered capacity, usage, and cost that supports sound decisions and repeatable financial operations.

About the Role

As Program Manager, Compute Transformation, you will lead cross-functional initiatives that connect purchasing, operations, billing, accounting, and financial planning across our compute commitments and our data center initiatives. This is a hands on individual contributor role with ownership of problem definition, process design, integrated planning, and end-to-end delivery.

You will work across Compute Finance, Infrastructure Accounting, Capacity Planning, Fleet, Design & Construction, Operations, Procurement, Legal, Data, and Engineering. You will turn ambiguous business problems into clear requirements, drive decisions and dependencies, and deliver reliable processes and systems that make compute and infra spend easier to understand, forecast, reconcile, and control.

This role is based in San Francisco, CA, with a hybrid work model of 3 days per week in the office.

In this role, you will:

• Own an integrated compute and infra transformation plan: workstreams, milestones, critical dependencies, resources, decision logs, and acceptance criteria. Drive execution from problem definition through production adoption.




• Map current workflows and design scalable processes from demand planning, contracting, delivery & acceptance, receiving & operations, invoicing, payment, and month-end close. Clarify ownership, handoffs, evidence, and exception paths.




• Enable source of truth systems that cover both operational needs and accounting / finance needs for data center construction, operations, and maintenance.




• Drive consistent tracking of contracts, tranches, delivery events, and capacity acceptance. Connect committed spend to provisioned, accepted, allocated, and used capacity to support forecasting and financial review.




• Coordinate reliable ingestion and normalization of cloud service provider usage, billing, invoice, and delivery data. Establish data owners, completeness checks, and traceability to financial outputs.




• Improve compute billing, accrual, and allocation processes through consistent pricing rules, SKU mappings, telemetry and organizational tags, reconciliations, and controlled handling of manual adjustments.




• Partner with application, AI, and data engineers to translate requirements into integrations and automation across contract, procurement, compute data, and finance platforms, with monitoring and governed change controls.




• Align Infrastructure, Finance, Accounting, Procurement, Legal, and Engineering on decisions and dependencies. Manage scope, risks, vendor dependencies, and change requests; escape with clear options and business impact.




• Lead end-to-end testing, UAT, rollout, training, and handoff to operational owners. Define success measures for traceability, data quality, manual effort, exception resolution, close readiness, and adoption.

You might thrive in this role if you have:

• 8+ years of experience in project or program management, finance transformation, infrastructure operations, or enterprise systems delivery in complex, scaled environments.




• Understanding of compute or infrastructure economics and related finance processes, including commitments, usage-based billing, procurement, accruals, cost allocation, and forecasting.




• Experience partnering with software and data engineers to define requirements, resolve tradeoffs, test solutions, and deliver changes into production without direct authority.




• A strong process mindset and the ability to connect contractual terms, operational events, financial data, and control requirements into a practical future-state design.




• Fluency in data dependencies, system integrations, reconciliation, and data quality. Comfort working with analytical teams and tools such as SQL, Databricks, and BI platforms.




• Experience improving workflows through automation or AI, with appropriate human review, controls, exception handling, and operational ownership.




• Clear, concise written and verbal communication, including executive updates that explain decisions, risks, business impact, and specific actions needed.




• Experience driving complex initiatives through ambiguity and organizational change, with clear evidence of hands‑on delivery and adoption. Cloud FinOps, infrastructure finance, or capacity-planning experience is a strong plus.

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 Aff….

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.

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