Lead, Corporate Technical Accounting and Strategic Transactions

Job description

About the Team OpenAI Finance is responsible for ensuring the organization is set up for success in pursuit of its mission. The Technical Accounting, Accounting Policy, and Financial Reporting organization partners across Finance to assess complex corporate matters and develop well-supported U.S. GAAP conclusions. The team supports non-routine business activities requiring thoughtful technical judgment, scalable accounting policies, financial statement disclosures, processes, and controls. About the Role You will serve as a senior technical accounting leader and strategic advisor to Finance and business leadership. You will oversee a broad portfolio of complex accounting matters and strategic transactions, including mergers and acquisitions, major commercial arrangements, financing transactions, investments and financial instruments, leases, intercompany transactions and consolidation, impairment, and other matters requiring significant professional judgment and practical implementation. You will advise and influence stakeholders across Corporate Accounting, Financial Reporting, Treasury, Legal, Tax, Strategic Finance, FP&A, Equity, Internal Controls, valuation specialists, and external auditors. You will drive timely resolution of complex accounting questions, align leaders on material judgments and risks, and ensure conclusions are translated into audit-ready memoranda, close entries, financial statement disclosures, and durable controls. You will also help strengthen external-reporting processes, as applicable. This is a highly visible role for an experienced accounting leader who can independently set direction for complex workstreams, advise senior decision-makers, anticipate and escalate material judgments, align cross-functional stakeholders, and carry issues from authoritative research through clear recommendations and disciplined implementation. Location and work model: This role is based in San Francisco and follows a 3 day hybrid work model. In this role, you will: - Lead the resolution of complex technical corporate accounting matters across the monthly and quarterly close; shape financial statement presentation and footnote disclosures; and ensure technical conclusions are reflected in journal entries, reconciliations, clear ownership, and effective controls. - Own the technical accounting for complex financing, investment, and equity-related arrangements, including classification, measurement, presentation, and disclosure. - Lead the assessment of consequential corporate accounting matters, including leases, commitments, contingencies, guarantees, accruals, prepaid expenses, property and equipment, internal-use software, capitalization, and vendor or partnership arrangements, as applicable. - Serve as a senior accounting advisor on strategic investments, acquisitions, joint ventures, and partnerships; lead the application of business-combination, equity-method, variable-interest-entity, consolidation, noncontrolling-interest, and purchase-accounting guidance as the facts require. - Lead assessments of potential impairment indicators and asset recoverability, as applicable, across goodwill and indefinite-lived intangibles, finite-lived intangibles and long-lived asset groups or assets held for sale, equity-method and nonmarketable equity investments, and eligible debt securities or receivables; oversee reporting-unit or asset-group identification, qualitative and quantitative testing, cash-flow forecasts, fair-value and expected-credit-loss estimates, sensitivities, evidence-backed memoranda, controls, disclosures, and auditor review in partnership with valuation specialists. - Lead the evaluation of stock-based compensation, equity awards, earnings-per-share implications, and the interplay among capital structure, valuation, dilution, ownership economics, and financial statement presentation. - Lead the accounting assessment of complex treasury and operating matters, including cash, liquidity, foreign currency, intercompany balances, related-party arrangements, and infrastructure or vendor commitments; coordinate with Tax on downstream impacts without owning tax conclusions. - Lead the development of concise, evidence-backed technical accounting memoranda and position papers; set and defend accounting positions grounded in authoritative guidance, materiality, key judgments, and economic substance; and drive timely alignment and resolution with external auditors. - Own the end-to-end translation of defensible accounting conclusions into journal entries, close procedures, footnote disclosures, data requirements, clear ownership, and repeatable control activities; drive coordinated implementation across Finance. - Anticipate emerging accounting standards, shape accounting policy and change-management efforts, and translate new guidance into practical implementation strategies, financial statement disclosures, reporting calendars, and scalable reporting processes. - Provide senior review of financial metrics and external-facing analyses, ensuring consistent definitions, clear labeling, appropriate reconciliations, controlled source data, and alignment with Legal guidance. - Partner with Financial Reporting and Internal Controls leaders to strengthen disclosure controls, SOX/ICFR readiness, impairment-trigger monitoring, annual and interim assessment controls, audit trails, valuation and financial statement tie-outs, and subsequent-event assessments. - Lead high-priority, cross-functional strategic transactions spanning accounting-policy implementation, operating-model changes, legal-entity matters, systems or process improvements, and other non-routine corporate initiatives. - Design and institutionalize pragmatic accounting policies, playbooks, decision frameworks, and automation that improve consistency, strengthen organizational capability, preserve independent judgment, faithfully represent economic substance, and escalate unresolved issues promptly. You might thrive in this role if you: - Hold a CPA, CA, or equivalent accounting qualification, or bring comparable demonstrated technical-accounting expertise. - Bring 10+ years of progressive experience in technical accounting, accounting advisory, public accounting, corporate controllership, or complex financial reporting, with meaningful industry or transaction experience and a record of leading high-stakes accounting matters. - Demonstrate broad U.S. GAAP expertise across corporate accounting, leases, financial instruments, capitalized costs, share-based compensation, consolidation, impairment, and financial statement presentation, with the judgment to apply the appropriate guidance to each matter. - Apply relevant guidance across ASC 205, 230, 250, and 260; ASC 320, 321, 323, and 326; ASC 350, including ASC 350-40, and ASC 360; and ASC 450, 460, 470, 480, 718, 805, 810, 815, 820, 830, 842, and 850 as the facts and assigned portfolio require. - Have led and defended significant accounting positions, developed or reviewed audit-ready technical memoranda, evaluated competing accounting views, worked constructively with external auditors, and grounded conclusions in evidence, economic substance, and authoritative guidance. - Have led significant aspects of corporate close and reporting, acquisitions or investments, complex ownership structures, consolidation, and impairment or credit-loss assessments; understand how technical decisions affect forecasts, valuations, journal entries, reconciliations, disclosures, and controls. - Understand how accounting policies and technical judgments flow into entity-level close, financial statements, footnote disclosures, account reconciliations, significant estimates, treasury activity, and external-reporting readiness, where applicable. - Influence and advise leaders across Legal, Treasury, Tax, Corporate Accounting, Financial Reporting, FP&A, valuation, and the business while maintaining independent technical judgment and constructive challenge. - Communicate complex accounting judgments and their strategic implications clearly to senior leaders and both technical and nontechnical audiences, including practical alternatives, evidence gaps, unresolved risks, and recommended decisions. - Set priorities across multiple consequential workstreams, mentor and develop colleagues, and raise the bar for inclusive, scalable accounting practices while protecting financial reporting integrity. 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 https://cdn.openai.com/policies/eeo-policy-statement.pdf. 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. 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