Incidents & Escalations Lead, User Operations

OpenAI; California (MO); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Relocation assistance

Hybrid work in SF

Competitive compensation

Job summary

OpenAI is seeking a hands-on lead to build and run Incidents & Escalations within User Operations in San Francisco, with a 3-day office hybrid model and relocation assistance. This player-coach role combines hands-on incident response with shaping the operating model, coordinating cross-functional teams, and ensuring timely, clear communications during incidents and escalations.

You will own alert triage, drive post-incident retrospectives, identify root causes, and implement durable

Qualifications

• 8+ years in incident management, technical support, or production operations.
• Hands-on experience in production, on-call, or high-urgency environments.
• 4+ years of leadership in a Support/Engineering or similar setting.

Responsibilities

• Lead active incident response calls, coordinate cross-functional teams, and drive ownership during incidents.
• Own alert intake, triage processes, and determine severity and scope for rapid action.
• Oversee post-incident retrospectives, root-cause analysis, and action tracking to prevent recurrence.

Skills

Incident management

On-call leadership

SRE principles

Technical communication

Tools

incident.io

PagerDuty

Datadog

Jira

Salesforce

Zendesk

Job description

OpenAI is seeking a hands-on lead to build and run Incidents & Escalations within User Operations in San Francisco, with a 3-day office hybrid model and relocation assistance. This player-coach role combines hands-on incident response with shaping the operating model, coordinating cross-functional teams, and ensuring timely, clear communications during incidents and escalations.

You will own alert triage, drive post-incident retrospectives, identify root causes, and implement durable