About the roleThe OpenAI Foundation is building AI Resilience: the capacity for society to absorb, adapt to, and benefit from increasingly capable AI systems. The Program Officer, AI Resources owns the Foundation's strategy for turning capital into usable AI-provided labor by securing compute, model access, partnerships, and the governance needed to deploy that labor where it matters most.
This is a founding operator-strategist role. The work is not simply procurement and not simply research. It requires developing a clear thesis about when compute scarcity matters, evaluating paths across the infrastructure stack, influencing senior stakeholders, and executing under short timelines.
In this role, you will:- Develop the Foundation's compute and model-access strategy for AI-provided labor, including the case for pre-positioned compute, where the thesis is strongest, and what evidence would change the plan.
- Map and compare options across the stack: OpenAI and other model-provider agreements, token and model-access deals, reserved cloud or neocloud capacity, compute acquisitions, data center or colocation paths, chips, supply-chain exposure, and financial hedges.
- Lead technical, commercial, legal, and governance diligence on providers and transaction paths, translating details about GPUs, power, cooling, networking, security, deployment timelines, and inference economics into decision-grade recommendations.
- Build partnerships with OpenAI PBC, frontier AI companies, hyperscalers, neoclouds, infrastructure operators, technical experts, advisors, and mission partners.
- Design a portfolio approach that balances baseline capacity the Foundation can control with surge access bought or reserved through trusted providers.
- Create the allocation and governance model for AI-provided labor across Foundation programs, grantees, and partners, including decision rights, risk controls, escalation paths, and crunch-time tradeoffs.
- Prepare board- and leadership-ready materials that make the thesis, options, risks, and decision points legible without hiding uncertainty.
- Stand up the operating function: team, advisor network, diligence cadence, partner pipeline, risk register, decision artifacts, and execution rhythm.
What you will build in the first 12 months- A shared model of the compute crunch, including scenarios where markets clear, where prices rise but access remains liquid, and where money alone cannot secure capacity.
- A decision-grade map of acquisition and partnership paths, with clear tradeoffs across mission impact, lead time, reversibility, counterparty risk, financial exposure, governance, and operational complexity.
- A recommended portfolio across baseline controlled capacity and surge model-provider access, sized to the Foundation's mission needs and risk tolerance.
- Concrete partnership or transaction paths with OpenAI PBC and other relevant providers, including the terms, diligence questions, and internal decisions needed to move.
- An allocation and governance system for where AI-provided labor goes, how programs and grantees request it, and how hard tradeoffs are made under capacity stress.
- A small but excellent team and advisor bench that can cover infrastructure, finance, legal, security, model access, and AI Resilience program demand.
You might thrive in this role if you:- You can reason from first principles under deep uncertainty, name the cruxes, and update quickly when new evidence arrives.
- You have enough AI infrastructure fluency to be credible with experts across GPUs, cloud, neoclouds, data centers, power, cooling, networking, security, and inference economics.
- You treat capital allocation as mission stewardship, not just an elegant strategy exercise.
- You can compare owned compute, reserved capacity, on-demand model access, partnerships, acquisitions, and hedges without falling in love with one path too early.
- You can earn trust from senior leaders, technical experts, legal and finance partners, board members, and external counterparties with different incentives and risk tolerances.
- You have founder-level agency: you turn ambiguous mandates into concrete plans, artifacts, decisions, partners, and execution.
- You can articulate the strongest case against your own plan and still keep the work moving.
CompensationThe annual base salary range for this role is $220,000 to $300,000 USD.
This range reflects our good-faith estimate of the base salary we reasonably expect to pay for this position upon hire. Actual base salary will be determined based on job-related factors, including the candidate's relevant experience, skills, expertise, the scope of the role, and work location, as applicable.
This salary range does not include benefits or any other compensation for which the role may be eligible.
