Business Lead, Special Situations

OpenAI; United States; On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

OpenAI is seeking a Business Lead to own a strategic partnership with responsibility for setting direction, driving decisions, and delivering measurable outcomes. The role focuses on building a joint go-to-market, coordinating internal and external teams, and delivering an enterprise deployment with high impact.

The role is a hands-on leadership position based in San Francisco, requiring deep product and partner understanding and the ability to drive negotiations and execution across teams.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience leading high-stakes business operations, partnerships, or cross-functional programs.

Responsibilities

• Own the integrated partnership strategy and operating plan with clear priorities and decision points.
• Drive highest-priority initiatives from problem definition through implementation and measurable outcomes.
• Build and run a rigorous operating cadence to accelerate decisions and expose risks early.
• Develop trusted relationships across executive, commercial, product, technical, legal, finance and deployment teams.
• Translate partnership priorities into commercial, product, deployment and go-to-market workstreams.
• Stand up a joint go-to-market motion and lead the first cohort of joint customers from targeting to execution.
• Translate product and technical integration concepts into roadmap requirements and implementation patterns.

Job description

About the Team

OpenAI\'s Business organization works with customers and partners on some of our most complex and consequential opportunities. These efforts often span commercial strategy, product and technical collaboration, deployment, and new go-to-market motions.

About the Role

We are hiring a Business Lead to own and advance a strategically important partnership. This person will be the day-to-day DRI and operating leader: setting direction, building the operating cadence, driving decisions, and converting shared ambition into measurable results.

This is a hands-on leadership role, not a coordination role. You will personally develop plans and commercial positions, drive negotiations, write decision materials, resolve blockers, and drive execution across internal and external teams. You will become deeply familiar with both product stacks and develop a clear, defensible point of view on how our products should integrate with, complement, or remain distinct from the partner\'s products.

Success means operationalizing the partnership, standing up a joint go-to-market motion and landing an initial cohort of customers, and executing a high-quality enterprise deployment while expanding the depth and value of the relationship. This role is based in San Francisco.

In this role, you will:

• Own the integrated partnership strategy and operating plan, with clear priorities, outcomes, owners, dependencies, and decision points
• Personally drive the highest-priority initiatives from problem definition through decision, implementation, and measurable outcome
• Build and run a rigorous internal and external operating cadence that creates decision velocity, accountability, and early visibility into risk
• Develop trusted, high-accountability relationships across executive, commercial, product, technical, legal, finance, and deployment stakeholders
• Translate partnership priorities into well-formed commercial, product, technical, deployment, and go-to-market workstreams
• Stand up a joint go-to-market motion and drive the first cohort of joint customers from targeting and value proposition through execution
• Develop an opinionated view, grounded in customer value and technical feasibility, of how our products should integrate with, complement, or remain distinct from the partner\'s products; translate it with Product, Engineering, and deployment teams into roadmap choices, requirements, and implementation patterns
• Prepare executive decisions and escalated only material strategy, economic, contractual, or external commitments that require sponsor approval
• Step into the work required to deliver the outcome, including analysis, writing, negotiation preparation, operating reviews, escalation, and follow-through

You might thrive in this role if you have:

• Substantial experience leading high-stakes business operations, strategic partnerships, product operations, or complex cross-functional programs
• A track record as the accountable operator for consequential outcomes, not only as an advisor or coordinator
• Excellent program leadership and organizational skills, with a bias toward simple mechanisms that improve decisions and execution
• Exceptional internal and external relationship leadership, including candid communication, conflict resolution, and expectation management
• Strong product judgment and sufficient technical fluency to become deeply familiar with both product stacks, form a defensible integration thesis, challenge assumptions, and collaborate credibly with technical counterparts
• Commercial judgment and negotiation experience across economics, packaging, delivery commitments, and long-term strategic value
• High agency, low ego, sound judgment, and a willingness to do the detailed work required to move outcomes forward
• Clear, concise executive communication and exceptional follow-through in fast-moving environments with incomplete information

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 Affi... (continue as originally provided)

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 wit