Infrastructure Finance Lead, Data Centers

About the Team

The Strategic Finance team provides commercial and financial insights to support OpenAI’s long-term infrastructure strategy.

About the Role

This Strategic Finance Lead will drive financial planning, commercial strategy, and investment decisions related to OpenAI’s data centers, colocation, energy procurement, and real estate expansion.

You will work at the intersection of finance, legal, engineering, and operations, leading high-stakes negotiations, cost optimization strategies, and capital investments to ensure OpenAI has the compute capacity needed to support cutting-edge AI research and product growth. This is a high-visibility role, requiring strong strategic thinking, financial modeling, and deal execution skills.

This role is based in San Francisco, CA.

In this role, you will:Investment Strategy & Financial Oversight

• Lead financial planning, cost management, and capital allocation for OpenAI’s data center infrastructure, colocation, and real estate investments.

• Build and maintain risk-adjusted investment models to optimize capital efficiency, site selection, and operational costs.

• Work closely with engineering and project controls teams to develop a unified cost model that tracks power, cooling, construction, and leasing expenses.

Commercial Strategy & Negotiations

• Drive high-value commercial negotiations with data center providers, colocation partners, and energy suppliers, ensuring cost-effective and scalable infrastructure.

• Lead contract structuring for colocation leases, power purchase agreements (PPAs), and long-term infrastructure deals.

• Work closely with legal and procurement teams to ensure contracts mitigate risk while providing OpenAI with long-term flexibility.

• Structure strategic partnerships with key real estate, energy, and infrastructure providers to secure future compute capacity.

Site Selection & Expansion Planning

• Oversee financial due diligence for data center site selection, assessing land acquisition costs, energy pricing, and regional tax incentives.

• Develop long-term site investment strategies, ensuring OpenAI has scalable, cost-efficient locations for future AI compute expansion.

• Partner with engineering, finance, and commercial teams to evaluate build vs. lease vs. cloud trade-offs.

Power & Energy Procurement

• Develop and execute power sourcing strategies, securing low-cost, renewable energy to support OpenAI’s growing compute footprint.

• Forecast long-term energy needs, ensuring OpenAI’s AI workloads scale cost-effectively.

• Negotiate power purchase agreements (PPAs) to hedge against energy market volatility and lock in cost advantages.

Executive Reporting & Cross-Functional Leadership

• Develop high-quality presentations for OpenAI’s executive team and Board, providing clear insights and recommendations on infrastructure investments and cost strategies.

• Partner with FP&A, strategic finance, and engineering teams to align infrastructure investments with broader financial and business objectives.

• Stay abreast of market trends, competitive dynamics, and emerging technologies to continuously refine OpenAI’s data center and infrastructure investment strategy.

 You might thrive in this role if you have: 

• 7+ years of experience across strategic finance, business operations, venture capital, private/growth equity, private credit, investment banking, consulting, strategic finance, corporate development, strategy & operations, and/or business development

• Experience with project finance, capital project and infrastructure financial analysis, and large-scale, high dollar investment projects

• Knowledge of physical computing infrastructure: power and space, data center facilities, hardware, and networking

• Exceptionally strong analytical, financial modeling, and written and oral communication skills

• Demonstrated track record of thoughtful investment decisions

• Experience driving operational outcomes under ambitious deadlines

• Exceptionally strong relationship building, business judgment, and communication skills

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience