Senior Vendor Manager - SMB Sales

OpenAI; Dublin; On-site; EUR 120,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

OpenAI, a leading AI research and deployment company, is seeking a Senior Vendor Manager for SMB Sales to own performance across outsourced vendor networks. You will drive large-scale sales execution through partners, manage regional and site-level outcomes, and ensure governance, forecasting, and operational rigor across multiple motions.

You will work with leadership, operations, enablement, and program management to surface issues early, implement corrective actions, and improve overall

Qualifications

• Have 8+ years of experience in vendor management, sales operations, scaled sales execution, vendor leadership, or commercial operations.
• Direct experience managing outsourced sales or revenue-generating vendor operations.
• Experience in software, SaaS, cloud, or other high-velocity commercial environments.
• Strong experience with Tier 1 vendor partners.
• Proven ownership of sales performance across multiple teams, sites, regions, or vendors.
• Strong understanding of sales funnel metrics, forecasting, conversion, productivity, quality, and governance.
• Experience building and running WBRs, QBRs, scorecards, and corrective action plans.
• Executive presence and ability to influence senior stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Own regional and site-level performance across revenue, pipeline, conversion, productivity, quality, and other sales metrics.
• Inspect funnel health and diagnose performance gaps due to quality, execution, routing, enablement, staffing, or process issues.
• Surface underperformance early and drive corrective action with vendor leadership.
• Build corrective action plans with measurable outcomes and follow-through.
• Lead Weekly, Monthly, and Quarterly Business Reviews with vendor partners to drive decisions.
• Create and maintain scorecards for performance, quality, health, and risk visibility.
• Hold vendor leadership to accountability for frontline management, coaching, staffing, and execution.
• Adopt global playbooks and QA frameworks regionally, using quality trends and analyses to identify improvements.
• Identify recurring issues and partner cross-functionally to solve systemic problems while preserving customer experience.
• Own forecast quality, pipeline discipline, and risk inspection across regions; stress-test vendor forecasts.
• Translate signals into clear narratives and leadership recommendations.
• Monitor new-hire ramp, certifications, productivity curves, and vendor readiness before launching changes.
• Collaborate with Enablement, Revenue Ops, and Program Management to close readiness gaps and manage capacity.
• Help redefine vendor operations for AI-native sales with automation and scalable systems to boost productivity and visibility.

Skills

Vendor management

Sales operations

Scaled sales execution

Vendor leadership

Commercial operations

Job description

About the Team

The SMB Sales team is focused on scaling efficient, high-quality sales execution across a range of commercial motions, including Inbound, Outbound, API Sales, Channel, and SDR. We partner closely with Sales Leadership, Revenue Operations, Finance, Enablement, Program Management, and external vendor partners to build scalable operating models that support growth while maintaining a high bar for performance and customer experience.

About the Role

As a Senior Vendor Manager, SMB Sales, you will own performance across our outsourced SMB Sales vendor network.

This is not a traditional vendor management role. We're looking for a performance-focused operator who can drive large-scale sales execution through vendor partners, rather than someone primarily focused on vendor relationship management.

You will own regional and site-level performance across Tier 1 partners, with responsibility for sales performance, quality, forecasting, governance, operational readiness, and vendor leadership accountability across multiple sales motions.

You'll work at the intersection of Sales Leadership, Revenue Operations, Finance, Enablement, Program Management, and external vendor executives. You will help ensure the machine performs: surfacing issues early, creating accountability, and driving the operating rigor needed to deliver consistently strong outcomes at scale.

In this role, you will:

• Own regional and site-level performance across revenue, pipeline, conversion, productivity, quality, and other key sales metrics.
• Inspect sales funnel health and diagnose whether performance gaps are driven by quality, execution, routing, enablement, staffing, or process issues.
• Surface underperformance early, diagnose the underlying drivers, and drive urgency around corrective action.
• Build clear corrective action plans with vendor leadership, establish measurable outcomes, and ensure strong follow-through.
• Lead Weekly Business Reviews, Monthly Business Reviews, and Quarterly Business Reviews with vendor partners, ensuring governance forums drive decisions, not just reporting.
• Build and maintain scorecards that make sales performance, quality, operational health, and risk visible.
• Hold vendor leadership accountable for frontline management quality, coaching effectiveness, staffing discipline, and execution rigor.
• Own regional adoption of global playbooks, QA frameworks, and operating standards, using quality trends, call reviews, calibration outputs, and conversion analysis to identify opportunities for improvement.
• Identify recurring operational failure modes and partner cross-functionally to solve systemic issues while maintaining a high bar for customer experience.
• Own forecast quality, pipeline discipline, and risk inspection across assigned regions, building a consistent inspection cadence across motions and partners and pressure-testing vendor forecasts against activity, pipeline, and expected outcomes.
• Translate complex operational and performance signals into clear business narratives and recommendations for senior leadership.
• Monitor new-hire ramp, certification outcomes, productivity curves, and overall vendor readiness before launching new motions, regions, or major process changes.
• Partner with Enablement, Revenue Operations, and Program Management to close readiness gaps and manage capacity against forecasted demand and business priorities.
• Help redefine vendor operations for an AI-native sales environment, using automation, AI-enabled workflows, and scalable operating systems to improve seller productivity, forecasting accuracy, quality inspection, execution speed, decision-making, and performance visibility.

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Have 8+ years of experience in vendor management, sales operations, scaled sales execution, vendor leadership, or commercial operations.
• Have direct experience managing outsourced sales or revenue-generating vendor operations.
• Have experience working in software, SaaS, cloud, or other high-velocity commercial environments.
• Have strong experience working with Tier 1 vendor partners.
• Have proven experience owning sales performance across multiple teams, sites, regions, or vendors.
• Have a strong understanding of sales funnel metrics, forecasting, conversion, productivity, quality, and operational governance.
• Have experience building and running WBRs, QBRs, performance scorecards, and corrective action plans.
• Bring strong executive presence and the ability to influence senior internal and external stakeholders.

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, …