Why This Job is Featured on The SaaS Jobs
Compute and infrastructure spend has become a defining constraint for modern AI SaaS, and this Strategic Finance role sits directly on that pressure point. The remit spans forecasting, capacity planning, commercial terms, and partnership considerations, which signals a company operating at meaningful scale where compute decisions materially shape product delivery and unit economics. For SaaS professionals, it is a clear example of how “cost of goods sold” increasingly includes GPUs, networking, and long term supply commitments, not just cloud bills.
Career wise, the role builds durable SaaS finance leverage by connecting technical cost drivers to business outcomes and executive decision making. Ownership of multi layer models across hardware and vendor structures strengthens skills that translate across usage based and enterprise SaaS models, especially where infrastructure efficiency influences pricing, margins, and roadmap tradeoffs. The emphasis on board level narratives also develops the communication discipline expected in strategic finance leadership.
This position fits someone who enjoys cross functional work with engineering and wants scope beyond reporting into investment shaping analysis. It suits a professional who is comfortable operating in ambiguous planning cycles, synthesizing market signals, and turning complex infrastructure inputs into clear choices for senior stakeholders.
The section above is editorial commentary from The SaaS Jobs, provided to help SaaS professionals understand the role in a broader industry context.
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 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 have:
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
Technical undergraduate degree (e.g., Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or similar quantitative field) preferred
Experience partnering with engineering and product teams to provide financial analysis and insights for critical strategic decisions
Strong understanding of cloud technology, compute infrastructure, and technical cost drivers
Exceptionally strong analytical, financial modeling, and written/verbal communication skills
Demonstrated track record of thoughtful investment decisions and sound business judgment
Experience driving operational outcomes under ambitious deadlines
Exceptionally strong relationship-building skills with the ability to influence cross-functional stakeholders
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.
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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