B2B Ecosystem Lead, Business Development

OpenAI, Inc.; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

OpenAI, Inc. in San Francisco seeks a B2B Ecosystem Lead to identify, develop, and execute strategic and product partnerships across B2B segments.

This hands-on role spans opportunity assessment, partnership design, commercial negotiation, and execution, owning partner work behind product initiatives from needs definition to launch and sustained adoption at scale. You will coordinate with Product, Engineering, Sales, Marketing, Legal, Finance, Security, Policy, and Operations to resolve launch

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in business development, strategic or product partnerships, or related roles developing commercial opportunities in technology or other B2B businesses.
• Experience developing B2B partnerships and taking a product, integration, or partner initiative from concept or pilot through launch and sustained adoption, working closely with product and technical teams.
• A broad business perspective and the ability to learn unfamiliar industries, evaluate partner capabilities and strategic fit, and turn an ambiguous opportunity into a clear business case and partnership plan.
• Understanding of how businesses use software, data, and services, and how product integrations, distribution, and complementary capabilities create value. Experience across B2B sectors and business models is a plus.
• Strong commercial and analytical judgment, including the ability to assess economics, prioritize competing opportunities, and use performance data to guide decisions.
• Ability to build relationships with partner practitioners and leaders, work effectively across technical and business teams, and move projects forward without formal authority.
• Clear writing and communication, curiosity about AI, and a willingness to do the detailed work of growing partnerships. You combine initiative and adaptability with disciplined follow-through.

Responsibilities

• Identify strategic and product partnership opportunities across B2B segments; translate product priorities and customer needs into partner plans, joint value propositions, and a focused set of prospective partners.
• Own the partner work stream for assigned product initiatives, aligning requirements, commitments, milestones, and ongoing responsibilities with Product, Engineering, and partner teams.
• Develop business cases and negotiate product and commercial partnerships with Legal, Finance, and Product, including selected high-touch strategic deals in coordination with other partnership owners.
• Take partner initiatives from pilot through launch and scale, defining readiness criteria, coordinating integrations, and expanding successful offerings to more partners and business customers.
• Work with Sales and partner teams on target accounts, referrals, joint selling, and customer introductions, with clear responsibilities for follow-up and opportunity tracking.
• Coordinate Product, Engineering, Sales, Marketing, Legal, Finance, Security, Policy, and Operations to resolve launch and adoption barriers, with clear ownership and handoffs into ongoing partner programs.
• Maintain partner relationships after launch and bring customer feedback, integration gaps, and adoption barriers back to Product and Engineering; help turn early implementations into repeatable offerings.
• Define success measures with product and go-to-market teams, track activation, sustained usage, customer outcomes, and commercial impact, and drive follow-up when an initiative falls short.

Skills

Business development

Partnerships

Negotiation

Cross-functional collaboration

Strategic thinking

Communication

Analytics

Learning agility

Job description

About the Team

We are a small and fast-moving B2B partnerships team that shapes and executes OpenAI’s most important collaborations. We develop strategic and product partnerships across the B2B ecosystem, bringing together OpenAI’s capabilities and partners’ technology, expertise, data, workflows, and customer relationships. Working closely with Product, Engineering, and Sales, we turn these opportunities into useful offerings and new ways for businesses to adopt and benefit from OpenAI.

About the Role

As a B2B Ecosystem Lead, you will identify, develop, and execute strategic and product partnerships across B2B segments. This is a hands-on individual contributor role spanning opportunity assessment, partnership design, commercial negotiation, and execution. You will own the partner work behind product initiatives, from defining partner needs through launch and sustained adoption at scale. These may include Sign in with ChatGPT and industry-specific offerings. You bring a generalist’s ability to connect product priorities with partner capabilities, build a business case, and align teams around a practical path forward. You will remain accountable after signing and launch, including for selected high-touch strategic partnerships.

Key Responsibilities

• Identify strategic and product partnership opportunities across B2B segments; translate product priorities and customer needs into partner plans, joint value propositions, and a focused set of prospective partners.
• Own the partner work stream for assigned product initiatives, aligning requirements, commitments, milestones, and ongoing responsibilities with Product, Engineering, and partner teams.
• Develop business cases and negotiate product and commercial partnerships with Legal, Finance, and Product, including selected high-touch strategic deals in coordination with other partnership owners.
• Take partner initiatives from pilot through launch and scale, defining readiness criteria, coordinating integrations, and expanding successful offerings to more partners and business customers.
• Work with Sales and partner teams on target accounts, referrals, joint selling, and customer introductions, with clear responsibilities for follow-up and opportunity tracking.
• Coordinate Product, Engineering, Sales, Marketing, Legal, Finance, Security, Policy, and Operations to resolve launch and adoption barriers, with clear ownership and handoffs into ongoing partner programs.
• Maintain partner relationships after launch and bring customer feedback, integration gaps, and adoption barriers back to Product and Engineering; help turn early implementations into repeatable offerings.
• Define success measures with product and go-to-market teams, track activation, sustained usage, customer outcomes, and commercial impact, and drive follow-up when an initiative falls short.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in business development, strategic or product partnerships, or related roles developing commercial opportunities in technology or other B2B businesses.
• Experience developing B2B partnerships and taking a product, integration, or partner initiative from concept or pilot through launch and sustained adoption, working closely with product and technical teams.
• A broad business perspective and the ability to learn unfamiliar industries, evaluate partner capabilities and strategic fit, and turn an ambiguous opportunity into a clear business case and partnership plan.
• Understanding of how businesses use software, data, and services, and how product integrations, distribution, and complementary capabilities create value. Experience across B2B sectors and business models is a plus.
• Strong commercial and analytical judgment, including the ability to assess economics, prioritize competing opportunities, and use performance data to guide decisions.
• Ability to build relationships with partner practitioners and leaders, work effectively across technical and business teams, and move projects forward without formal authority.
• Clear writing and communication, curiosity about AI, and a willingness to do the detailed work of growing partnerships. You combine initiative and adaptability with disciplined follow-through.

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 Affinitive Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement

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.

To notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant, please submit a report through this form. No response will be provided to inquiries unrelated to job posting compliance.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link.

OpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy

At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.