Manager, Technical & Operational Accounting

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 partner closely with Technical Accounting, Financial Reporting and Controllership to translate complex accounting conclusions into scalable operational procedures. You will build processes for non-standard transactions, including warrants, equity-method investments, debt and equity securities, non-controlling interests, hypothetical liquidation at book value allocations, business combinations, and other complex financing, investment, and capital arrangements.

You will advise stakeholders across Corporate Accounting, Financial Reporting, Treasury, Legal, Tax, Strategic Finance, FP&A, Equity, Internal Controls, valuation specialists, and external auditors. You will help resolve complex accounting questions, align leaders on material judgments and risks, and translate conclusions into audit-ready memoranda, close entries, disclosures, processes, and controls.

This is a highly visible role for an accounting professional who can turn technical conclusions into practical execution, support non-routine transactions through recurring close processes, and strengthen operational accounting across Finance.

In this role, you will:

- Own operational accounting for complex financing, investment, equity, and capital arrangements, including classification, measurement, presentation, disclosure, and recurring close processes.

- In partnership with technical accounting, lead day-one and recurring accounting for non-standard transactions, including fair-value measurements, equity-method investments, debt and equity securities, warrants, noncontrolling interests, and hypothetical liquidation at book value allocations.

- Perform reconciliations for assigned accounts, investigate discrepancies, and drive issues to resolution.

- Support the resolution of complex accounting matters during monthly and quarterly close. Ensure conclusions are reflected in financial statement presentation, footnote disclosures, journal entries, reconciliations, ownership, and controls.

- Build operational processes to assess impairment indicators and asset recoverability for goodwill, intangible assets, long-lived asset groups, equity-method investments, nonmarketable equity investments, and debt securities, as applicable.

- Coordinate valuations for non-standard transactions with Technical Accounting and valuation specialists.

- Lead audit support for assigned investments and other complex accounting areas. Prepare evidence-backed schedules, memoranda, reconciliations, valuation support, and financial statement tie-outs.

- Analyze significant equity and other compensation awards, and partner with Equity Administration and Controllership to ensure accurate, timely accounting and booking.

- Coordinate with Tax on downstream impacts without owning tax conclusions.

- Partner with Financial Reporting and Internal Controls to strengthen controls, SOX/ICFR readiness, impairment monitoring, audit trails, tie-outs, and subsequent-event procedures.

- Monitor emerging accounting standards and translate new guidance into policies, implementation plans, disclosures, reporting calendars, and scalable processes.

- Participate in cross-functional initiatives involving accounting-policy implementation, operating-model changes, legal-entity matters, and systems or process improvements.

- Develop pragmatic accounting policies, playbooks, decision frameworks, and automation that improve consistency, strengthen capability, preserve judgment, reflect economic substance, and escalate unresolved issues.

You might thrive in this role if you:

- Hold a CPA, CA, or equivalent accounting qualification, or bring comparable demonstrated technical-accounting expertise.

- Bring 5+ years of progressive experience in technical accounting, accounting advisory, public accounting, corporate controllership, or complex financial reporting, with meaningful industry or transaction experience.

- Demonstrate broad U.S. GAAP expertise across corporate accounting, financial instruments, consolidation, business combinations, equity-method investments, debt and equity securities, impairment, fair value, financial statement presentation, and complex ownership structures.

- Apply relevant guidance across ASC 320, 321, 323 326, 350, 360, 470, 480, 718, 805, 810, 815, and 820; and other applicable guidance as the facts require.

- Have developed or reviewed audit-ready technical memoranda, implemented conclusions in recurring operations, worked constructively with external auditors, and grounded conclusions in evidence, economic substance, and authoritative guidance.

- Have experience with significant aspects of close and reporting, acquisitions or investments, complex ownership structures, consolidation, or impairment assessments. Understand how technical decisions affect journal entries, reconciliations, disclosures, and controls.

- Understand how accounting policies and judgments flow into close, financial statements, disclosures, reconciliations, significant estimates, treasury activity, and external-reporting readiness.

- Set priorities across consequential workstreams and raise the bar for inclusive, scalable accounting practices while protecting financial reporting integrity.

- Have experience with Oracle Fusion Accounting Hub, accounting rules engines, automated subledgers, ERP implementations, or similar source-to-general-ledger systems.

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. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

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