Director, Compute Infrastructure Procurement Operations
Anthropic · San Francisco, United States +1 · 3mo ago
About Anthropic
Anthropic’s mission is to create reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. We want AI to be safe and beneficial for our users and for society as a whole. Our team is a quickly growing group of committed researchers, engineers, policy experts, and business leaders working together to build beneficial AI systems.
About the Role
Anthropic is seeking a Director of Compute Infrastructure Procurement Operations to build and lead the function responsible for how Anthropic procures, tracks, and governs its compute infrastructure assets at scale. This is a function-building role within the Finance org.
You will own supplier strategy, cost optimization, and category management for one of the largest and most complex capital procurement portfolios in AI. You will simultaneously operationalize three enterprise-scale initiatives: a multi-entity procurement structure spanning domestic and international jurisdictions, a compliance-critical Asset Lifecycle Management program and procurement operations for Anthropic data center sites across the US with international expansion underway.
This role reports directly to the Head of Procurement and serves as the senior procurement leader embedded with Infrastructure Accounting, Finance, Tax, Legal, and DC Operations. You are building the team, the playbooks, and the systems that will govern billions of dollars in compute infrastructure spend.
Responsibilities
Supplier Strategy & Cost Optimization
- Own key supplier relationships across compute hardware (networking, storage, racks, power infrastructure) and negotiate pricing frameworks, and volume commitments
- Establish playbooks and sourcing strategies for hyperscale infrastructure procurement
- Drive material savings through partnering with strategic sourcing teams within the Data Center Design and Ops teams, vendor consolidation, and commercial optimization across a multi-billion dollar spend portfolio
- Support contract negotiations and understand the liabilities and obligations with compute vendors
Data Center Entity Operationalization
- Operationalize new entity for tax-optimized procurement of data center and infrastructure equipment
- Stand up international procurement operations as local entities are formed. Manage vendor contracting party transitions, contract novation/repapering, local vendor onboarding, KYC, and VAT/GST registration
- Partner with Tax and Legal on entity structure decisions, ensuring procurement workflows align with the interim-to-permanent entity transition framework
Asset Lifecycle Management
- Serve as Procurement’s DRI on ALM implementation (Steerco and OpCo), owning the Asset Taxonomy and Zip/Three-Way Match workstreams and implementing with the business
- Drive PO data remediation (unit price, quantity, MPN) and configure PO item types to enable automated three-way match (PO ↔ receipt ↔ invoice) at serial-number granularity
- Enforce ASN compliance as a contractual condition on all new POs; standardize shipping terms across vendor contracts
- Ensure procurement controls meet all audit requirements
Data Center Expansion & Operations
- Lead finance procurement operations for domestic data center sites and international expansion, managing concurrent buildouts with developers and partner operators
- Manage BOM-to-PO reconciliation, equipment logistics, shipping coordination, and delivery tracking across all active sites
- Build and maintain interim reconciliation workbooks and dashboards to provide Finance, Legal, and Security with complete procurement visibility until systems are fully operationalized
Lease Administration
- Hire and lead a dedicated Lease Admin Lead; own the build-out of the lease administration function (people, process, and systems)
- Own implementation of the lease administration platform, partnering with Infra/Workplace, Finance, and Accounting on configuration, data migration, and operational workflows; ensure upstream lease data accuracy (abstraction, system data hygiene)
- Ensure critical dates (renewals, options, notices) are tracked and routed to the appropriate stakeholders; decision rights on renewals and options remain with Infra/Workplace
- Oversee reconciliations and landlord billing audits
- Oversee landlord billing operations and payment escalations, with the commercial landlord relationship owned by Infra/Workplace
Team Building & Process Excellence
- Build, hire, and lead the Compute Infrastructure Procurement Ops team, defining roles spanning supplier strategy, compute operations, international procurement, and systems and project management
- Design and implement scalable operating models, DRI/RACI frameworks, and governance structures for cross-functional handoffs between Procurement, DC Operations, Accounting, and FinSys
- Embed Claude into key procurement workflows (intake, vendor onboarding, PO management, reconciliation, reporting) to reduce manual effort and improve cycle times
Minimum qualifications
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Deep domain knowledge of compute infrastructure components: servers, GPUs/TPUs, networking equipment, storage, racks, power distribution, and cooling infrastructure
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Experience managing capital-intensive procurement portfolios (multi $B+) including negotiation, category strategy, and vendor consolidation
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Strong understanding of procure-to-pay processes, purchase order governance, and asset lifecycle management
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Experience operating in SOX-compliant environments with understanding of ITGCs, ICFR, and financial control frameworks
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Experience with international procurement operations including entity structuring, customs/export controls, VAT/GST recovery, and cross-border logistics
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Proven track record of process improvement, systems implementation, and workflow automation in high-growth environments
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Familiarity with data center colocation agreements and equipment financing structures (lease administration / ASC 842 exposure a plus, not required)
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Leadership and systems design influencing skills.
Preferred qualifications
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12+ years of procurement experience with a minimum of 5 years in compute infrastructure, data center operations, or hyperscale supply chain
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8+ years of people management experience, with demonstrated ability to build and scale teams during periods of rapid organizational growth
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Experience at hyperscale infrastructure companies (CoreWeave, Equinix, AWS, GCP, Azure, NVIDIA) or other frontier AI/ML companies
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Direct experience standing up procurement entities (buy/sell structures, intercompany frameworks) for tax optimization
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Experience implementing asset lifecycle management or ERP systems in infrastructure contexts
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Background in supply chain for semiconductor, networking, or high-performance computing components
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Experience with procurement platforms such as Zip and Workday
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Experience using AI tools (including Claude) to automate procurement workflows
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Bachelor’s degree in Supply Chain Management, Finance, Accounting, Business, or Engineering
The annual compensation range for this role is listed below.
For sales roles, the range provided is the role’s On Target Earnings ("OTE") range, meaning that the range includes both the sales commissions/sales bonuses target and annual base salary for the role.
Logistics
Minimum education: Bachelor’s degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and/or experience
Required field of study: A field relevant to the role as demonstrated through coursework, training, or professional experience
Minimum years of experience: Years of experience required will correlate with the internal job level requirements for the position
Location-based hybrid policy: Currently, we expect all staff to be in one of our offices at least 25% of the time. However, some roles may require more time in our offices.
Visa sponsorship: We do sponsor visas! However, we aren't able to successfully sponsor visas for every role and every candidate. But if we make you an offer, we will make every reasonable effort to get you a visa, and we retain an immigration lawyer to help with this.
We encourage you to apply even if you do not believe you meet every single qualification. Not all strong candidates will meet every single qualification as listed. Research shows that people who identify as being from underrepresented groups are more prone to experiencing imposter syndrome and doubting the strength of their candidacy, so we urge you not to exclude yourself prematurely and to submit an application if you're interested in this work. We think AI systems like the ones we're building have enormous social and ethical implications. We think this makes representation even more important, and we strive to include a range of diverse perspectives on our team.
Your safety matters to us. To protect yourself from potential scams, remember that Anthropic recruiters only contact you from @anthropic.com email addresses. In some cases, we may partner with vetted recruiting agencies who will identify themselves as working on behalf of Anthropic. Be cautious of emails from other domains. Legitimate Anthropic recruiters will never ask for money, fees, or banking information before your first day. If you're ever unsure about a communication, don't click any links—visit anthropic.com/careers directly for confirmed position openings.
How we're different
We believe that the highest-impact AI research will be big science. At Anthropic we work as a single cohesive team on just a few large-scale research efforts. And we value impact — advancing our long-term goals of steerable, trustworthy AI — rather than work on smaller and more specific puzzles. We view AI research as an empirical science, which has as much in common with physics and biology as with traditional efforts in computer science. We're an extremely collaborative group, and we host frequent research discussions to ensure that we are pursuing the highest-impact work at any given time. As such, we greatly value communication skills.
The easiest way to understand our research directions is to read our recent research. This research continues many of the directions our team worked on prior to Anthropic, including: GPT-3, Circuit-Based Interpretability, Multimodal Neurons, Scaling Laws, AI & Compute, Concrete Problems in AI Safety, and Learning from Human Preferences.
Come work with us!
Anthropic is a public benefit corporation headquartered in San Francisco. We offer competitive compensation and benefits, optional equity donation matching, generous vacation and parental leave, flexible working hours, and a lovely office space in which to collaborate with colleagues. Guidance on Candidates' AI Usage: Learn about our policy for using AI in our application process.