IT Software Architect, SaaS Enablement and Governance

OpenAI; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 250,000; Full time

Job summary

OpenAI is seeking an IT Software Architect to shape software, SaaS, data integration, and agent-enabled architecture that enables rapid decision making with strong security and governance.

You will partner with Security, Procurement, Finance and business verticals to define reusable enterprise patterns, drive deprecation and consolidation, and create architecture artifacts understandable to executives and engineers alike. This role emphasizes hands-on governance and real-world impact.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in enterprise architecture or related leadership role.
• Strong understanding of SaaS operating models and software lifecycle management.
• Experience designing integrations across large SaaS ecosystems (CRM, ERP, marketplace).
• Knowledge of identity and access patterns including SSO, OIDC, SAML, SCIM, RBAC/ABAC.
• Ability to evaluate software on business value, security, data exposure, cost, and vendor strategy.
• Ability to influence senior stakeholders and write clear architecture decisions.

Responsibilities

• Own target architecture for enterprise software, SaaS, integrations, APIs, and agent-enabled business systems.
• Build governance patterns to guide teams before decisions.
• Create architecture standards for identity, access, data movement, API usage, auditability.
• Partner with Security on SSO, MFA, privileged access, data residency, encryption, incident response.
• Evaluate renewals, rationalizations, and enterprise agreements with Procurement and Finance.
• Collaborate with GTM, Finance, Legal, HR, Research, Product to translate workflows into scalable patterns.
• Review proposed SaaS and internal tools for overlap, risk and long-term fit.
• Develop reusable architecture blueprints for intake, workflow, data integration, reporting, content management, learning.
• Define where OpenAI-native GPT or agent-built solutions replace point SaaS tools.
• Create decision records and architecture artifacts for business leaders and engineers.
• Drive software catalog maturity by linking inventory, ownership, and renewal data.

Skills

Enterprise architecture

SaaS governance

Integration architecture

Identity & access management

Stakeholder collaboration

Architecture decision records

AI-native architecture

Job description

About the Team

The SaaS and Software Governance team sits within Corporate IT and helps OpenAI scale from startup-speed tooling to mature enterprise architecture. The team owns practical governance for software, SaaS, integrations, APIs, identity, data access, and agent-enabled workflows, with a mandate to improve security, reduce software sprawl, and help business teams move faster through better foundations.

About the Team

OpenAI is scaling from an emerging, high-velocity startup into a mature enterprise operating model. The IT Software Architect will help shape the software, SaaS, Data integration, and agent-enabled architecture that lets the company move quickly while improving security, compliance, data quality, and customer, partner, and employee experience.

This role is not a traditional ivory-tower architecture function. It is a hands-on governance and enablement role that partners with business teams, IT operations, Security, Procurement, Business Platforms, Applied teams and Data Engineering to guide software decisions, reduce unmanaged sprawl, and build reusable enterprise foundations.

Why This Role Matters

OpenAI’s software footprint is expanding rapidly across SaaS, internally built tools, agents, integrations, APIs, third-party platforms, and application systems that OpenAI. The company needs a stronger tools architecture layer that can help teams make good decisions early, avoid duplicate tools, govern sensitive data and identities, and identify where OpenAI should build instead of buy.

The person in this role will help turn software governance from an approval checkpoint into an enterprise capability: a system that improves speed, reliability, security, and business outcomes.

What You’ll Do

• Own the target architecture for enterprise software, SaaS, integrations, APIs, and agent-enabled business systems across Corporate IT. Drive deprecation and consolidate targets for enterprise software.
• Build lightweight governance patterns that guide teams before software and integration decisions become hard to unwind.
• Create architecture standards for identity, access, data movement, API usage, admin rights, auditability, observability, and vendor integration.
• Partner with Security to ensure software architecture addresses SSO, SCIM, MFA, privileged access, non-human identities, secrets, token storage, data residency, encryption, retention, and incident response readiness.
• Partner with Procurement and Finance to evaluate renewals, rationalization opportunities, enterprise agreements, and build-versus-buy decisions.
• Partner deeply with application verticals such as GTM, Finance, Legal, HR, Research, Product, and Operations teams to evaluate agentic business workflows and translate them into scalable enterprise system patterns.
• Review proposed SaaS and internally built tools for overlap, risk, integration quality, ownership, lifecycle, supportability, and long-term fit.
• Develop reusable architecture blueprints for common capabilities such as intake, workflow, approvals, knowledge management, customer/partner 360, data integration, reporting, content management, learning, surveys, and collaboration.
• Help define where OpenAI-native GPT or agent-built solutions should replace or enable point SaaS tools.
• Create clear decision records and architecture artifacts that are understandable by business leaders, engineers, security reviewers, and procurement partners.
• Drive software catalog maturity by connecting tool inventory, business owner, system owner, integration path, data classification, access model, renewal, risk posture, and support model.

Core Architecture Domains

• SaaS governance and software catalog maturity
• Enterprise integration architecture, including APIs, event flows, middleware, and system-of-record boundaries
• Identity, access, and admin model design across internal and external users
• Data architecture for SaaS, customer, supplier, employee, partner, product, consumption, and connected business models.
• Agentic workflow architecture and GPT-built replacement patterns
• Vendor architecture reviews and enterprise agreement leverage across strategic platforms.
• Security, compliance, ITGC, audit evidence, and operational readiness
• Support model design, ownership, SLAs, escalation paths, and lifecycle management

What You’ll Bring

• 10+ years of experience in enterprise architecture, business systems architecture, IT architecture, SaaS governance, integration architecture, or a related technical leadership role.
• Strong understanding of SaaS operating models, software lifecycle management, software asset management, and vendor/platform governance.
• Experience designing integrations across systems, experience in large scale SaaS such as CRM, ERP and Marketplace platforms.
• Practical knowledge of identity and access patterns including SSO, OIDC, SAML, SCIM, RBAC/ABAC, privileged admin models, service accounts, OAuth apps, and token governance.
• Ability to evaluate software from multiple angles: business value, architecture fit, security posture, data exposure, cost, supportability, user experience, and vendor strategy.
• Comfort operating in ambiguity, building structure where little exists, and influencing senior stakeholders without relying only on formal authority.
• Ability to write clear architecture decision records, governance standards, system diagrams, business cases, and executive-ready recommendations.
• Strong partner orientation: able to help teams move faster while raising the quality of decisions.
• Curiosity about AI-native enterprise architecture and where GPT, Codex, and agentic workflows can replace or enable traditional SaaS patterns.

Preferred Experience

• Experience scaling IT or business systems from startup-stage tooling into mature enterprise architecture.
• Experience with software rationalization, SaaS enablement and deprecation, vendor consolidation, or enterprise license optimization.
• Experience with architecting systems in a high-growth environment.
• Experience building governance for internally developed tools, low-code/no-code platforms, agents, or employee-built automation.
• Experience working closely with Security, GRC, Legal, Procurement, and Finance on cross-functional risk and control programs.

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 Affiant 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.

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