Tax Director - Infrastructure & Incentives

ABOUT THE TEAM

OpenAI Finance is responsible for ensuring the organization is set up for success in pursuit of its mission.

OpenAI’s Tax and Trade team sits at the center of OpenAI’s global growth—shaping how cutting-edge AI products, partnerships, and infrastructure scale across borders while navigating complex tax, trade, and regulatory regimes. We operate as strategic operators, not just compliance experts, embedding early in product, finance, policy, and infrastructure decisions to manage risk, unlock incentives, and enable OpenAI to grow responsibly and competitively worldwide.

As OpenAI’s products, monetization models, and global infrastructure expand, our tax systems must scale with the same rigor and reliability as our product architecture. The team partners deeply with Financial Engineering, Product Engineering, and Finance Systems to build a modern tax technology stack that enables accurate, real-time tax determination across OpenAI’s global business.

ABOUT THE ROLE

We're hiring a Director, Tax Infrastructure & Incentives to lead OpenAI's global tax infrastructure strategy supporting AI infrastructure expansion programs.

You will own the tax strategy supporting data center development, site selection, infrastructure investments, and government incentive programs across. This role extends far beyond traditional property tax planning and reporting - you will help shape where and how OpenAI invests billions of dollars in AI infrastructure by partnering with executive leadership, infrastructure teams, governments, utilities, and external stakeholders.

You will build scalable frameworks for negotiating and managing tax incentives, property tax, indirect tax, and infrastructure-related tax matters while developing repeatable processes that enable OpenAI to expand rapidly across multiple jurisdictions. You will also establish the governance, reporting, and operational infrastructure required to support long-term compliance, financial reporting, and executive decision-making as our infrastructure footprint grows globally.

This role requires a strategic leader who can operate comfortably across executive discussions, complex negotiations, and cross-functional execution while building a world-class infrastructure tax organization.

This role is based in San Francisco, CA and we use a hybrid work model of three days in the office per week.

IN THIS ROLE, YOU WILL:

• Lead OpenAI's global tax infrastructure strategy supporting hyperscale AI infrastructure expansion.

• Develop and execute tax strategies supporting site selection, data center development, and long-term infrastructure investments.

• Structure, negotiate, and administer complex state, local, federal, and international incentive programs, including property tax abatements, PILOT agreements, sales and use tax incentives, grants, investment tax credits, and other economic development programs.

• Partner closely with Infrastructure, Real Estate, Finance, Treasury, Legal, Public Policy, Energy, and Engineering throughout the lifecycle of major infrastructure projects - from early site evaluation through construction and ongoing operations.

• Lead tax due diligence, financial modeling, and incentive valuation for new infrastructure investments and strategic expansion opportunities.

• Establish scalable governance processes to manage incentive compliance, reporting obligations, audit readiness, and ongoing stakeholder communications..

• Partner with Tax Technology and Financial Engineering teams to automate property tax, incentive administration, and indirect tax processes while improving data quality and operational efficiency.

• Build executive-level reporting that communicates financial impact, investment returns, tax savings, compliance status, and strategic risks across the infrastructure portfolio.

• Serve as OpenAI's primary tax advisor on infrastructure transactions, public-private partnerships, energy investments, and large-scale capital deployment initiatives.

• Build strong relationships with state and local governments, economic development organizations, utilities, external advisors, and industry partners.

• Monitor legislative and regulatory developments affecting data centers, AI infrastructure, energy, property taxation, and government incentives, translating emerging policy into actionable business strategy.

YOU MIGHT THRIVE IN THIS ROLE IF YOU HAVE:

• 12+ years of experience in state and local tax, property tax, tax incentives, infrastructure tax, or economic development, including significant in-house leadership experience.

• Deep experience supporting large-scale infrastructure investments, data centers, manufacturing, semiconductor, energy, or other capital-intensive industries.

• Demonstrated success negotiating complex economic development incentives with state and local governments.

• Strong understanding of property tax, sales and use tax, construction taxation, and infrastructure-related tax issues.

• Experience building scalable tax processes and governance frameworks supporting multi-billion-dollar capital investment programs.

• Strong financial modeling skills with the ability to evaluate investment returns, incentive value, and long-term financial impacts.

• Experience partnering effectively with executive leadership and influencing cross-functional strategic decisions.

• Exceptional communication and negotiation skills with the ability to represent OpenAI before government officials, external advisors, and senior executives.

• Proven ability to lead highly cross-functional initiatives across Finance, Legal, Infrastructure, Engineering, Treasury, Public Policy, and Operations.

• Experience building, mentoring, and developing high-performing teams in fast-growing organizations.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Experience supporting hyperscale data center development or cloud infrastructure investments.

• Experience negotiating incentives across multiple U.S. states and international jurisdictions.

• Familiarity with energy markets, utility incentive programs, renewable energy investments, or transmission infrastructure.

• Experience implementing tax technology solutions supporting property tax, incentives, and indirect tax processes.

• CPA, JD, MST, or equivalent advanced tax qualification.

• Experience in a high-growth technology company or other rapidly scaling global organization.

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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