Accounts Payable Lead at OpenAI

About the Team

OpenAI Finance is responsible for ensuring the organization is set up for success in pursuit of its mission. The Procurement team advises our business partners to make the best investments, ensures we acquire the resources needed for growth, and enables our mission through efficient procurement practices. 

About the Role

As an Accounts Payable Lead, you’ll oversee vendor management and the company's travel and expense program, ensuring compliance and efficient operations. You’ll also lead the AP team, collaborate with cross-functional teams, and provide financial insights to support management decisions.

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:

• Oversee invoice coding, review requisitions, and process vendor payments accurately and in a timely manner

• Manage vendor relationships end-to-end from negotiating terms, onboarding, ensuring compliance with contractual agreements, and acting as an escalation point 

• Oversee the company’s travel and expense program, ensuring compliance with corporate policies, timely reimbursement, and a delightful employee experience

• Prepare and analyze AP-related financial reports to provide recommendations to management

• Partner with Accounting on Month-End Close deliverables

• Collaborate with cross-functional teams—particularly accounting, legal, HR, workplace, and IT—to optimize and streamline AP operations (e.g. establishing SOPs for the A/P process) 

• Lead and mentor the AP team, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and ensuring timely invoice processing and adherence to SLAs

• Conduct periodic audits and implement corrective actions and improvements based on findings, optimizing for streamlined operations that adhere to regulatory requirements 

You might thrive in this role if you have:

• A Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Finance, or related field

• Experience working in a high growth technology company

• 5+ years of experience in accounts payable

• 3+ years of experience in procurement operations

• A strong understanding of General Ledger (GL) structures and financial reporting

• Experience effectively overseeing a team and driving operational excellence

• Experience working with modern ERP, Expense, and Procurement software and systems (e.g. Zip, Navan, and NetSuite) 

• Excellent communication, interpersonal skills, and detail orientation with a focus on compliance 

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 do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability or any other legally protected status. 

For US Based Candidates: Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link.

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