Frontier AI Research · San Francisco
About the Team
OpenAI is building Procurement of the future: one that uses AI-enabled systems, clean data, and scalable processes to help the business absorb increasing complexity, speed, volume, and throughput — while enabling teams across OpenAI to operate more strategically and at greater scale.
The Hardware Procurement Operations team supports the operational flow of goods and hardware purchasing across OpenAI's hardware business units. We help teams turn business needs into controlled, accurate, and executable procurement activity, from request intake through purchase orders, supplier coordination, change management, receiving readiness, and downstream invoice support.
As OpenAI scales, we are building procurement operations that can support changing hardware needs, new business unit priorities, and increasing operational complexity. That means creating practical standards where they help, preserving flexibility where the business requires it, and continuously improving how requests, suppliers, POs, data, and controls move through our systems.
About the Role
As a Senior Manager of Procurement Operations focused on Hardware, you will own procurement operations for one or more assigned hardware business units. You will be the day-to-day DRI for hardware and goods procurement activity, leading work from intake through purchase requests, POs, supplier needs, changes, receiving readiness, and operational escalations.
This is a hands-on operator-builder role for someone who understands the practical complexity of hardware and goods procurement and can both run the work and redesign how the work gets done. You will keep work moving while improving the operating model through better systems, workflows, automation, AI-enabled processes, controls, metrics, and operating leverage. You will evaluate how people, process, policy, systems, data, fiscal controls, and accounting practices come together, and you will work closely with other Central Procurement and BU Procurement subject area owners as a team to define and drive standardization where it is practical and applicable.
We work closely with hardware business teams, Strategic Sourcing, Finance, Legal, Security, Financial Risk Management, Accounting, and Accounts Payable. Our goal is to make it easier for hardware teams to move quickly while ensuring procurement activity is complete, policy-aligned, and reliable for the teams that depend on it.
This role requires strong judgment, ownership, and financial fluency. Hardware teams need speed, flexibility, and clear answers; Procurement Operations also needs clean data, fiscal controls, accounting alignment, auditability, commitment visibility, accrual readiness, and reliable downstream handoffs. You will balance those needs in a changing environment, understand how upstream procurement choices affect downstream financial outcomes, and drive measurable improvements in request-to-PO cycle time, PO quality, exception rates, receiving readiness, invoice match performance, commitment visibility, and close readiness.
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 procurement operations outcomes for assigned hardware business unit teams and serve as their primary Procurement Operations DRI.
Redesign workflows, intake paths, routing logic, and operating rhythms so hardware procurement operations can scale without linear headcount growth.
Lead hardware and goods procurement operations from request intake through PO creation, PO maintenance, supplier coordination, receiving readiness, and invoice-readiness handoffs.
Drive alignment with hardware stakeholders to clarify requirements, resolve blockers, and keep procurement activity moving with the right level of control.
Ensure requests and POs are complete, policy-aligned, audit-ready, and supported by clean operational data.
Identify and resolve issues related to supplier setup, supplier requirements, PO structure, receiving, documentation, approvals, and downstream invoice matching.
Balance urgent business needs with procurement controls, approval requirements, exception paths, and auditability.
Work closely with Procurement subject area owners as a team to standardize workflows, intake requirements, operating rhythms, and metrics where practical.
Identify repeatable work patterns, define system and process requirements, and help build scalable workflows, automations, controls, and reporting for assigned hardware business units.
Build operating leverage through practical documentation, SOPs, playbooks, dashboards, templates, self-service guidance, intake logic, and AI-enabled workflow improvements that reduce repeated manual follow-up and recurring exceptions.
Serve as the primary operational escalation point for assigned hardware business units, escalating risks early and driving issues through to clear resolution.
You might thrive in this role if you:
Bring 7+ years of procurement operations, P2P, supply chain operations, or related experience, ideally in hardware, goods, manufacturing, infrastructure, lab, data center, device, or similarly complex physical-goods environments.
Demonstrate a strong working understanding of fiscal controls, accounting-adjacent procurement practices, invoice matching, accrual support, commitment visibility, and audit-ready documentation.
Navigate request-to-PO operations, supplier workflows, PO maintenance, receiving dependencies, change management, and downstream invoice-readiness requirements with confidence.
Understands how people, process, policy, systems, data, fiscal controls, and accounting outcomes holistically connect.
Leverage procurement, intake, ERP, supplier, ticketing, and workflow platforms such as Zip, Oracle, Coupa, SAP, NetSuite, Jira, ServiceNow, or similar tools.
Balance speed and business enablement with strong operational controls, particularly when urgent execution is required.
Adapt comfortably to evolving policies, priorities, ownership structures, and operating models.
Learn quickly and can build context across new business areas, stakeholders, systems, and supplier models.
Communicate effectively with business partners, Procurement peers, Finance, Legal, Security, Accounting, AP, and Systems teams.
Use data and metrics to improve cycle time, PO quality, exception rates, receiving readiness, invoice match performance, commitment visibility, accrual readiness, and downstream financial accuracy.
Act as an operator builder who can step into the queue when needed, identify recurring patterns, and translate them into scalable workflows, tools, automations, and operating improvements.
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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