Commercial Compute & Ecosystem Strategy
OpenAI
San Francisco, CA, USA
Location
San Francisco
Employment Type
Full time
Department
Scaling
Compensation
- $347K – $405K • Offers Equity
The base pay offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factors, including market location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. If the role is non-exempt, overtime pay will be provided consistent with applicable laws. In addition to the salary range listed above, total compensation also includes generous equity, performance-related bonus(es) for eligible employees, and the following benefits.
Medical, dental, and vision insurance for you and your family, with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts
Pre-tax accounts for Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and commuter expenses (parking and transit)
401(k) retirement plan with employer match
Paid parental leave (up to 24 weeks for birth parents and 20 weeks for non-birthing parents), plus paid medical and caregiver leave (up to 8 weeks)
Paid time off: flexible PTO for exempt employees and up to 15 days annually for non-exempt employees
13+ paid company holidays, and multiple paid coordinated company office closures throughout the year for focus and recharge, plus paid sick or safe time (1 hour per 30 hours worked, or more, as required by applicable state or local law)
Mental health and wellness support
Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage
Annual learning and development stipend to fuel your professional growth
Daily meals in our offices, and meal delivery credits as eligible
Relocation support for eligible employees
Additional taxable fringe benefits, such as charitable donation matching and wellness stipends, may also be provided.
More details about our benefits are available to candidates during the hiring process.
This role is at-will and OpenAI reserves the right to modify base pay and other compensation components at any time based on individual performance, team or company results, or market conditions.
About the Team
The Industrial Compute team is responsible for building and scaling the infrastructure foundation that powers OpenAI’s research and products. The team works across compute strategy, infrastructure planning, hardware partnerships, and capacity management to ensure OpenAI can meet rapidly growing training and inference demands with resilient, efficient, and future-looking infrastructure systems.
About the Role
As the Head of Compute Strategy & Ecosystem Management, you will lead long-term compute acquisition strategy and ecosystem management across OpenAI’s rapidly scaling infrastructure footprint. You will drive strategic planning for compute acquisition, capacity forecasting, and infrastructure deployment, balancing evolving workload requirements across training, inference, and research against supply constraints, cost efficiency, and speed to capacity.
You will also manage the broader ecosystem of data center partners, hardware vendors, cloud providers, and infrastructure suppliers, ensuring OpenAI maintains strong strategic relationships and resilient infrastructure capabilities as we scale.
We’re looking for people who combine deep infrastructure and business strategy expertise with strong operational judgment, executive communication, and cross-functional leadership. This role is highly cross-functional and requires close partnership with engineering, finance, operations, and executive leadership teams.
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:
Develop and execute OpenAI’s long-term compute acquisition and infrastructure capacity strategy across training, inference, and research workloads.
Lead strategic ecosystem management across data center partners, hardware vendors, cloud providers, and infrastructure suppliers.
Drive infrastructure planning, capacity forecasting, and deployment strategy to ensure scalable, resilient, and cost-efficient compute availability.
Partner closely with engineering, finance, operations, and executive leadership to align infrastructure investments with evolving technical and business priorities.
Evaluate supply, market, and technology trends to inform infrastructure strategy, vendor engagement, and long-range planning decisions.
Build frameworks and operational processes that improve infrastructure planning, deployment velocity, and ecosystem coordination at scale.
You might thrive in this role if you:
Have deep experience in infrastructure strategy, compute capacity planning, cloud infrastructure, data centers, or large-scale technical ecosystem management.
Bring strong cross-functional leadership and are comfortable operating across technical, operational, financial, and executive stakeholder groups.
Have experience managing strategic partnerships and negotiations with cloud providers, hardware vendors, infrastructure suppliers, or large-scale technology partners.
Are highly analytical and able to balance technical requirements, operational constraints, cost efficiency, and long-term strategic priorities.
Thrive in fast-moving environments with significant ambiguity and rapidly evolving infrastructure demands.
Have strong executive communication skills and can translate complex infrastructure considerations into clear strategic recommendations.
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.
To notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant, please submit a report through this form. 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.
OpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy
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.
Compensation Range: $347K - $405K