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Frontier AI Research · San Francisco
About the Team
OpenAI’s Central Procurement – Hardware Operations team is building scalable, AI-enabled operating foundations for a rapidly growing hardware footprint. We help the business move quickly while maintaining the data quality and controls needed to manage financial and operational risk responsibly.
As OpenAI scales across R&D, new-product introduction, manufacturing, and third-party custody models, we are building the foundations to absorb complexity without adding unnecessary friction. That means establishing practical standards, strengthening discipline where it matters, using AI thoughtfully, and continuously improving how teams manage hardware operations.
About the Role
We are hiring an Asset Compliance Program Lead to establish the cross-business framework that gives OpenAI reliable lifecycle visibility over hardware-related financial assets and capital equipment. You will define the controls, systems roadmap, and evidence practices needed to manage those assets within OpenAI’s financial-control scope.
This is a senior individual-contributor role in Central Procurement – Hardware Operations within Finance. Distinct from sourcing and transaction execution, you will partner with hardware business units, Accounting, Financial Risk Management, Procurement, contract manufacturers, and other third-party custodians to deploy practical operating mechanisms. These mechanisms will connect how assets are purchased, built, received, moved, held, verified, and retired with the ownership, data, reporting, and evidence needed for financial governance.
The role covers those assets regardless of location or custody, including manufacturing equipment and tooling, supplier- and contract-manufacturer-held assets, leased assets, and other third-party-held equipment.
You will stay close to the operational details—how assets move, where records diverge, which controls are not working, and where evidence is incomplete—and use that view to strengthen processes, accountability, and systems without compromising speed or flexibility.
In this role, you will:
Design and scale the end-to-end asset-compliance operating model across acquisition and capitalization, custody and location tracking, transfers, lifecycle events, inventory and verification, impairment or retirement, and audit-evidence retention.
Define the authoritative asset record and systems roadmap, connecting requests, contracts, purchase orders, invoices, receiving, inventory data, physical custody, transfers, and financial records.
Establish clear ownership and control points across OpenAI teams, suppliers, contract manufacturers, logistics providers, and other third-party custodians.
Build lifecycle reconciliations and a scalable verification model across multiple internal and third-party sites, using risk-based inventories, sample testing, attestations, and corrective-action tracking to identify missing records, ownership or location gaps, unrecorded transfers, unresolved exceptions, and incomplete audit evidence.
Establish an initial baseline of asset exposure and control gaps, then prioritize remediation based on financial, operational, custody, and reporting risk.
Identify recurring issues and use process, system, workflow, automation, and AI-enabled improvements to prevent repeat problems and improve the stakeholder experience.
Shape policy, standards, and governance improvements by bringing operational evidence, implementation insight, and risk findings to the appropriate decision-makers.
Define executive reporting on asset completeness, control performance, audit readiness, remediation progress, and emerging risks.
We’re looking for someone who can both operate and improve the system. This person will be hands-on in asset compliance while building the next version of how the work gets done: clearer standards, reliable data, stronger operating discipline, smarter workflows, and more AI-enabled ways of working.
You might thrive in the role if you:
Have 8+ years of experience in hardware operations, supply chain, manufacturing, asset management, procurement operations, audit, risk and controls, or a similarly control-intensive environment; including experience owning or improving end-to-end asset, custody, inventory, or third-party control processes.
Are experienced in operating in complex hardware environments, such as contract manufacturing, supplier- or third-party-held assets, manufacturing equipment or tooling, global custody, logistics, or physical inventory and verification.
Demonstrate systems fluency, including ERP platforms such as SAP or Oracle and the data flows among procurement, purchase orders, invoices, receiving, inventory, asset records, and the general ledger; experience defining or improving asset-management, workflow, reporting, or control systems.
Have experience establishing audit readiness through risk-based testing, reconciliations, evidence reviews, and remediation; able to build practical operating models from ambiguity and influence senior stakeholders and third parties without formal authority.
Bring practical judgment using AI to improve analysis, documentation, exception management, or workflow design while maintaining appropriate data protection, human review, and validation.
Enjoy turning complex, fragmented operations into practical standards, clear ownership, and scalable operating routines.
Are comfortable moving between detailed problem-solving and cross-functional influence, without relying on formal authority.
Balance a high bar for financial accuracy, audit readiness, and risk management with an enablement-focused approach that helps hardware teams move quickly.
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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