Responsibilities

OpenAI is seeking a Product Cost Management Lead to own the official costed bill of materials (BOM), system and cluster cost and price baseline, and platform-to-platform total cost of ownership (TCO) for our 1P AI infrastructure. You will turn component, system, POD, manufacturing, deployment, DC, service, and lifecycle inputs into a trusted view of product economics that informs technical and business decisions, including transition timing.
This is an individual contributor role with broad cross-functional ownership. The ideal candidate combines hardware cost expertise, rigorous modeling, sound judgment, and the ability to explain complex tradeoffs clearly to engineering, operations, and senior leaders.
Own the official costed BOM and system/pod roll-up by platform, generation, configuration, build phase, volume, and mix. Maintain version control and traceability to quotes, source owners, assumptions, and engineering revisions.
Publish and maintain the system/pod cost and price baseline, reconciling component pricing and manufacturing-partner inputs with approved configurations and planning assumptions.
Build platform-to-platform TCO comparisons covering component content, non-recurring engineering, tooling, manufacturing labor and overhead, yield, scrap, test, logistics, deployment, housing and site costs, power and cooling, networking, spares, service, warranty, and lifecycle costs.
Partner with housing and site teams to integrate their cost inputs into product economics, documenting scope, timing, allocation assumptions, and gaps so platform comparisons are consistent and avoid double counting.
Quantify the cost impact of engineering change orders and notices (ECOs/ECNs), architecture, specification, configuration, and qualification changes before approval. Assess recurring and one-time costs, implementation timing, inventory exposure, and expected benefits.
Develop a prioritized cost-reduction, value-engineering, and second-source opportunity funnel with Engineering, Strategic Sourcing, and manufacturing-partner management. Evaluate qualification costs, investment, payback, supply improvements, and execution risk.
Analyze actual, forecast, quoted, committed, and purchase-price costs against the baseline. Explain material variances, identify root causes, and track recovery actions with accountable owners and dates.
Build sensitivity and scenario analyses for supplier and manufacturing-partner options, capacity, volume and mix, yield, configuration, site, deployment timing, and lifecycle tradeoffs. Present clear recommendations with assumptions, confidence ranges, and decision deadlines.
Validate savings and cost avoidance with Finance and accountable source owners. Distinguish identified opportunities, approved actions, and realized benefits, including offsets and implementation costs.
Establish cost-data definitions, BOM hierarchy, allocation methods, currency and volume assumptions, refresh expectations, and change-control processes. Flag stale, incomplete, or unsupported inputs before they affect decisions.

Product Cost Management Lead - AI Infrastructure at OpenAI · LumiJobs

Product Cost Management Lead - AI Infrastructure

Responsibilities

Qualification

Preferred

Company

OpenAI

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