Senior Manager, Accounts Payable - Payments

About the Team OpenAI’s Procurement team makes working with the world easy, fast, and safe. We connect supplier readiness, purchasing, invoicing, and payment so teams can move with confidence as OpenAI scales. Accounts Payable provides the trusted data, dependable execution, and financial discipline behind that experience. About the Role We’re looking for an Accounts Payable Senior Manager to own and scale supplier payment operations. You’ll be responsible for accurate, timely payments, strong controls, and dependable service as OpenAI grows. This is a hands-on leadership role. You’ll review and approve supplier payment runs, oversee work initiated by our BPO teams and AP agents, as well as personally resolve complex exceptions. You’ll stay close to execution during volume spikes and month-end close while building the processes, coverage, and systems the team needs to scale. You’ll partner with Procurement, Supplier Master Data Operations, Accounting, Treasury, Tax, Finance Systems, and existing AP processing teams to make payments reliable from payment readiness through settlement reconciliation. You’ll clarify handoffs, address recurring failures, and improve ERP, banking, and procurement workflows. You’ll also apply automation and AI where they improve accuracy, service, or team capacity, with appropriate controls and human review. This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office (Mon-Wed) per week and we offer relocation assistance to new employees. We’re looking for someone with: Strategic AP leadership and a hands-on approach to scaling systems and processes, with strong attention to detail. Demonstrated ownership of complex indirect AP and supplier-payment operations, including PO and non-PO workflows. Experience leading teams or outsourced delivery partners, setting expectations, developing capability, and managing performance. Strong payment-control judgment and experience investigating duplicates, bank-detail changes, and payment failures. Working depth in AP accounting, reconciliations, accrual inputs, and close coordination. Experience translating AP needs into ERP or procurement-system improvements with measurable results. Clear communication and the ability to influence partners and senior stakeholders in ambiguous situations. In this role, you will: Own supplier payment operations: Review and approve payment runs for supplier and payment data accuracy, required approvals, and exception resolution. Oversee manual disbursements and payment inquiries within established authority and segregation-of-duties requirements. Resolve complex exceptions: Act as the primary escalation point for payment holds, rejected or returned payments, potential duplicates, and close blockers. Work with Treasury, banking partners, Accounting, and AP processing teams to establish the status, resolve the cause, and verify the outcome before retrying or closing an issue. Strengthen payment readiness: Partner with Procurement and existing AP teams to resolve invoice, PO, approval, and supplier-data gaps that affect payment. Establish clear owners and follow through on recurring upstream issues. Support forecasting and close: Provide reliable payment forecasts and cash-needs inputs to Treasury. Reconcile payment activity and exceptions, including payments after AP close, so Accounting has the evidence it needs for close and cutoff decisions. Maintain effective controls: Uphold SOX-aligned approvals, independent supplier bank-detail verification, segregation of duties, and audit-ready documentation. Support internal and external audits and remediate control gaps with the relevant owners. Improve systems and processes: Define payment workflow and reporting requirements with Finance Systems and other partners. Test ERP and bank integrations, including host-to-host workflows, and introduce automation or AI with validated outputs, exception handling, and clear accountability. Lead BPO delivery and capacity: Set clear SLAs and KPIs, review quality and performance, coach service partners, and maintain documented procedures and backup coverage. Plan for volume spikes and close demands. Report performance and risk: Own clear reporting on payment timeliness, exceptions, rejection and return trends, forecast accuracy, service quality, and control issues. Explain priorities and progress to stakeholders and leadership. You might thrive in this role if you: Bring 8+ years in AP, payments, or related finance operations, or equivalent experience, with personal ownership of complex supplier-payment operations and material exceptions. Have worked across indirect supplier spend in a high-growth or scaling environment, balancing immediate delivery with durable process improvements. Understand how invoices, approvals, supplier records, payment instructions, bank status, settlement, and reconciliation fit together, and can investigate discrepancies across them. Bring a strong controls mindset aligned t