Full-Time

Structured Finance Senior Associate

OpenAI

OpenAI

10,001+ employees

Develops safe AI models and tools

Compensation Overview

$185k - $260k/yr

San Francisco, CA, USA

Hybrid

Category
Finance & Banking (1)
Required Skills
Financial Modeling

Get referred to OpenAI

See people who can refer or advise you

Requirements
  • At least 4-6 years of directly relevant experience in project finance, structured finance, infrastructure finance, private equity, or a closely related field.
  • Deep financial modeling capability, including debt sizing, cash-flow waterfalls, sensitivities, covenant analysis, and scenario evaluation.
  • Meaningful involvement in financings that reached close, with a clear understanding of process, diligence, and documentation.
  • Experience at a bank, private equity or infrastructure investment firm, data center developer, infrastructure operator, or specialist advisory firm.
  • The ability to own workstreams independently, rather than only producing analysis on instruction.
  • Strong attention to detail and comfort operating in high-intensity transaction environments.
  • The maturity to interact directly with senior internal stakeholders and external counterparties.
  • Willingness to work from San Francisco.
Responsibilities
  • Translate financing objectives into clear analyses, recommendations, timelines, and deliverables.
  • Support senior transactors on complex financings, including structuring, documentation, diligence, negotiation, and closing.
  • Lead analysis, diligence, process tracking, and execution workstreams for financing transactions.
  • Own transaction models, including debt sizing, cash-flow waterfalls, sensitivities, covenant analysis, and scenario evaluation.
  • Work directly with internal stakeholders, banks, investors, counsel, advisors, and other counterparties.
  • Review transaction documentation and help ensure commercial, financial, and diligence details are reflected accurately.
  • Manage high-volume, detail-intensive workstreams in a lean team environment.
  • Help develop repeatable tools, processes, and analytical infrastructure as the capital markets function scales.
Desired Qualifications
  • Training under a well-regarded infrastructure or project finance group, platform, or senior leader.
  • Exposure to more than one financing product or capital source.
  • Experience in data centers, digital infrastructure, power, energy transition, or other capital-intensive infrastructure sectors.
  • Strong learning velocity and willingness to work without rigid role boundaries.

OpenAI conducts AI research and deployment to build advanced AI models and tools that help people automate tasks, be more creative, and make better decisions. Its products include ChatGPT, a conversational AI that can write, code, tutor, and assist in interactive tasks, and Sora, which can generate videos from text prompts. OpenAI’s models typically run through cloud-based services and subscriptions, with licensing and partnerships for broader use. The company operates a capped-profit model to balance generating revenue with ensuring safety, ethics, and long-term societal benefits. Its approach emphasizes safety, responsible deployment, and collaboration with researchers, governments, and institutions. The goal is to ensure artificial general intelligence, when it arrives, benefits all of humanity and minimizes risks.

Company Size

10,001+

Company Stage

Private

Total Funding

$196.5B

Headquarters

San Francisco, California

Founded

2015

Get referred to OpenAI

See people who can refer or advise you

Simplify Jobs

Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

  • OpenAI closed a $7 billion tender at an $852 billion valuation on August 10, 2026.
  • Linux ChatGPT launched August 11, broadening developer reach and closing a major platform gap.
  • Daybreak Blue, Daybreak Red, and GPT-5.6-Cyber extend OpenAI into defensive security workflows.

What critics are saying

  • Brad Lightcap, Fidji Simo, Kevin Weil, and others left in 2026, weakening execution.
  • The New York Times copyright fight escalated in 2026, threatening training data economics and payouts.
  • Open-source Meta and Anthropic pressure OpenAI; one serious safety failure could kill IPO credibility.

What makes OpenAI unique

  • OpenAI spans ChatGPT, Work, and Codex across every major desktop OS by August 11, 2026.
  • Microsoft 365 Copilot uses GPT-5.6 as its preferred model, deepening enterprise distribution.
  • OpenAI’s closed models and preparedness framework create a tightly controlled frontier product stack.

Help us improve and share your feedback! Did you find this helpful?

Benefits

Health insurance

Dental and vision insurance

Flexible spending account for healthcare and dependent care

Mental healthcare service

Fertility treatment coverage

401(k) with generous matching

20-week paid parental leave

Life insurance (complimentary)

AD&D insurance (complimentary)

Short-term/long-term disability insurance (complimentary)

Optional buy-up life insurance

Flexible work hours and unlimited paid time off (we encourage 4+ weeks per year)

Annual learning & development stipend

Regular team happy hours and outings

Daily catered lunch and dinner

Travel to domestic conferences

Growth & Insights and Company News

Headcount

6 month growth

-5%

1 year growth

-3%

2 year growth

1%
Fortune
Aug 12th, 2026
Sam Altman turned down Goldman Sachs internship, calls banking career 'unbelievably terrible' as OpenAI eyes $1T IPO

Sam Altman revealed he was "peer pressured and tricked" into accepting a Goldman Sachs internship during his sophomore year at Stanford, but ultimately declined it. Speaking at the Internapalooza Conference, the OpenAI CEO said working at Goldman "sounds unbelievably terrible now," criticising the hierarchical banking culture that leaves little room for creativity. Instead of banking, Altman worked on startup Loopt, joined Y Combinator, and eventually founded OpenAI. The company recently completed a $7 billion funding round and is eyeing a potential trillion-dollar IPO in 2026, with Goldman as an underwriter. Ironically, OpenAI now recruits Wall Street talent, having hired over 100 former investment bankers from Goldman, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley to train AI models for financial work. The company plans to expand its workforce to 8,000 by year-end.

Yahoo Finance
Aug 12th, 2026
BNY CEO Robin Vince rates himself 9/10 on AI usage, uses in-house platform for daily coaching

Robin Vince, CEO of America's oldest bank BNY and new OpenAI board member, rates himself a nine out of 10 for AI usage. He says he won't give himself full marks because AI is moving so quickly that using it to its fullest extent feels unattainable. BNY had over 100 "digital employees" in early 2025 before widespread agent adoption. The bank's in-house AI platform, Eliza, connects to employee feedback processes and provides daily coaching. It understands Vince's calendar, emails, and documents, offering advice on how to approach his day. Vince highlights AI's ability to see patterns across the entire 46,000-employee organisation and make recommendations that no single person could. He declined to comment on OpenAI's potential IPO, having joined the board only two weeks prior.

TechCrunch
Aug 11th, 2026
OpenAI launches ChatGPT desktop app for Linux after community requests

OpenAI has launched a desktop application for Linux users, responding to long-standing requests from the open source developer community. The preview release supports ChatGPT, ChatGPT Work, and Codex across major Linux distributions including Ubuntu 24.04 and 26.04 LTS, Debian 13, and Fedora 43 and 44. The company said Linux was one of the most-requested platforms for its desktop app. The worldwide release extends ChatGPT availability across every major desktop operating system. OpenAI trails competitor Anthropic, which launched its Claude desktop app for Linux approximately one month earlier. Anthropic's application supports Ubuntu 22.04 or later and Debian 12 or later.

Yahoo Finance
Aug 11th, 2026
OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap leaves to start new venture amid executive exodus

OpenAI executive Brad Lightcap is leaving the company to start something new, he announced to employees on Tuesday. Lightcap, who reported directly to CEO Sam Altman, had been covering special projects after being moved out of the chief operating officer role in April. His departure marks the latest in a series of executive exits from OpenAI. Fidji Simo, the company's number two executive, stepped down in July, whilst the head of ethics left this week after less than a year. The chief marketing officer also recently departed. Lightcap's exit reflects a broader trend of artificial intelligence executives leaving established labs to launch their own ventures.

Fortune
Aug 11th, 2026
OpenAI CFO: AI speeds decisions but human judgment remains essential

OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar insists artificial intelligence won't replace human judgment in finance, despite the company's aggressive adoption of AI tools. In a LinkedIn post and essay, Friar explained how OpenAI uses ChatGPT Work to speed up financial analysis whilst maintaining human accountability. "AI doesn't replace financial rigour or human judgment," Friar wrote. "It helps teams find issues sooner, ask better questions, and get insights to the business whilst there's still time to act." Friar outlined OpenAI's AI-native finance function, which aims for zero-day close and continuously updated forecasting. She offered five lessons for CFOs, including redesigning workflows around decisions rather than tasks and pairing speed with accountability. Recent OpenAI research finds 40% of finance professionals' specialised AI use involves work outside traditional finance.