Head of First Party Chip Finance

OpenAI • San Francisco, CA

1d • $293,000 - $342,000

About The Position

As Head of First Party Chip Finance, you will lead finance for OpenAI’s custom silicon efforts. You will partner with chip design, engineering, infrastructure, supply chain, and finance teams to translate technical roadmaps into investment decisions and financially disciplined execution. The role covers the full chip development lifecycle, including evaluating design and roadmap choices, building investment cases, forecasting development and production costs, and supporting manufacturing and deployment at scale. You will provide leadership with visibility into program economics, funding requirements, and risks as OpenAI builds first-party compute capabilities.

You will lead financial evaluation of custom silicon programs and assess first-party chips against alternative compute options. You will build program-level models and multiyear forecasts linking engineering milestones, development spending, manufacturing volumes, supplier commitments, and cash requirements. You will partner with chip-design and engineering leaders on decisions affecting performance, power consumption, cost, and deployment timing, and translate technical tradeoffs into financial recommendations.

The role also involves developing a detailed view of chip and system costs, working with Supply Chain and Procurement on supplier strategy and commercial negotiations, and partnering with Treasury, Corporate Finance, Accounting, Tax, and Legal on financing and payment structures, financial exposure, and execution. You will support commercial deployment and pricing through analysis of unit economics, total cost of ownership, and the relationship between technical performance and economic value. You will establish budgets, reporting, and financial controls that provide timely visibility into spending, commitments, milestones, and risks. You will build a small, high-performing team while remaining directly involved in the analysis.

Requirements

• Prior experience leading finance for semiconductor or custom silicon programs, with direct ownership of investment analysis, program budgets, and financial decisions across chip development and production.
• Undergraduate degree in a technical discipline, preferably electrical engineering or computer science.
• 10+ years of experience across semiconductor finance, hardware finance, strategic finance, or related fields, with substantial responsibility for complex technical programs.
• Strong command of semiconductor economics, including development costs, manufacturing yields, packaging and memory costs, production ramps, and supplier commitments.
• Excellent financial modeling skills, including the ability to independently build models, test technical and commercial assumptions, quantify uncertainty, and recommend a path forward.
• Technical credibility to work closely with chip designers and engineering leaders, understand their constraints, and evaluate tradeoffs across performance, power, cost, and timing.
• Experience supporting supplier negotiations, prepayments, and major investment commitments in partnership with supply chain and finance teams.
• Hands-on operating style, clear communication, and judgment to introduce financial discipline while helping technical teams move quickly.
• Use technology and AI to improve analysis and decision-making.
• Strong track record of hiring, leading, and developing high-performing teams.

Nice To Haves

• An MBA or equivalent business experience complements the technical foundation.

Responsibilities

• Lead financial evaluation of custom silicon programs, including development investment, production economics, deployment assumptions, and expected returns; compare first-party chips with alternative compute options.
• Build and own program-level models and multiyear forecasts connecting engineering milestones, development spending, manufacturing volumes, supplier commitments, and cash requirements.
• Partner with chip-design and engineering leaders on decisions affecting performance, power consumption, cost, and time to deployment, and translate design tradeoffs into financial recommendations.
• Develop a detailed view of chip and system costs, including wafers, manufacturing yields, packaging, memory, testing, and integration; identify opportunities to improve program economics.
• Partner with Supply Chain and Procurement on supplier strategy and commercial negotiations, including capacity reservations, volume commitments, prepayments, and contractual risk.
• Work with Treasury, Corporate Finance, Accounting, Tax, and Legal to evaluate financing and payment structures, manage financial exposure, and support program execution.
• Support commercial deployment and pricing decisions through analysis of unit economics, total cost of ownership, and the relationship between technical performance and economic value.
• Establish budgets, reporting, and financial controls to provide engineering and finance leaders timely visibility into spending, commitments, milestones, and emerging risks.
• Build a small, high-performing team while remaining directly involved in analysis.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Manager