Principal Recruiter, Strategic AI Talent

OpenAI; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 100,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Height-adjustable desks

Snacks and drinks

In-house meals

Wellness rooms

Job summary

OpenAI is looking for a strategic recruiter to join their San Francisco Research office, focusing on exceptional talent who require a nuanced recruiting process. The role involves defining priority targets and managing relationships with high-profile candidates.

The ideal candidate should have significant experience in recruiting specialized talent and strong judgment in handling sensitive conversations, along with a deep interest in the AI research landscape. The position follows a hybrid model and offers relocation assistance.

Qualifications

• Significant experience recruiting for highly technical or specialized talent.
• Strong judgment in handling confidential searches.
• Ability to gather market context and turn it into actionable insights.
• Experience partnering closely with senior leaders.

Responsibilities

• Define priority talent targets and engagement strategies.
• Build market intelligence across AI and research ecosystems.
• Identify and cultivate exceptional high-profile talent.
• Manage tailored candidate journeys and outreach plans.

Skills

Talent intelligence

Discretion handling sensitive info

Building candidate relationships

Influencing senior leaders

Job description

About the Team

OpenAI’s mission is to build safe artificial general intelligence (AGI) that benefits all of humanity. Achieving this requires bringing the world’s most exceptional talent under one roof to push the boundaries of what’s possible.

Our Research Recruiting team plays a critical role in this effort. We are an embedded part of the research organization—working side by side with our research staff to deeply understand evolving priorities, build trust, and strategically shape the future of OpenAI’s talent.

About the Role

We are looking for a highly strategic recruiter to work closely with the Head of Research Recruiting on a small set of unusually important, high‑touch searches and candidate relationships. This role will focus on exceptional talent who does not move through a standard recruiting process: highly visible researchers, technical leaders, operators, and other special‑interest candidates where timing, discretion, market intelligence, and tailored engagement matter as much as process execution.

This is not a conventional req‑based recruiting role. You will help identify where the market is moving, develop intelligence on top talent and competitor activity, translate that intelligence into action, and orchestrate bespoke recruiting strategies for candidates who require a more nuanced path into OpenAI. You should be able to translate these signals and states into clear, actionable advice for leaders and then make it happen.

In this role, you will:

• Partner directly with the Head of Research Recruiting and research leadership team to define priority talent targets and shape bespoke engagement strategies.
• Build and maintain deep market intelligence across frontier AI, research, engineering, and adjacent talent ecosystems, including competitor movement, candidate motivations, and relationship context.
• Proactively identify, map, and cultivate exceptional high‑profile talent before there is a formal or standard hiring process attached.
• Translate weak signals and network intelligence into concrete recruiting actions, outreach plans, and leadership recommendations.
• Manage highly tailored candidate journeys that may involve confidential outreach, senior stakeholder alignment, custom evaluation paths, and complex closing strategy.
• Coordinate with executive search firms, sourcers, recruiting coordinators, and internal networks to move priority searches forward with speed and discretion.
• Serve as a trusted advisor on candidate positioning, timing, risk, compensation, and closing strategy for especially sensitive or high‑impact hires.

You might thrive in this role if you have:

• Significant experience recruiting for highly technical, senior, executive, or otherwise specialized talent.
• Strong judgment and discretion in handling sensitive candidate conversations and confidential searches.
• A real instinct for talent intelligence: you know how to gather market context, read between the lines, and turn incomplete information into useful action.
• Track record of building relationships with hard‑to‑reach candidates who are not actively looking or who require a highly personalized process.
• Experience partnering closely with senior leaders and influencing recruiting strategy in ambiguous, fast‑moving environments.
• Comfort operating outside the standard process when needed, while still bringing structure, follow‑through, and sound judgment.
• Deep interest in AI research, technical talent markets, and the broader ecosystem of labs, companies, and people shaping the frontier.

Workplace & Location

This role is based in our San Francisco Research office and we aren’t considering remote applications at this time. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office with optional work from home on Thursdays and Fridays. We also offer relocation assistance to new employees.

Our open‑plan offices have height‑adjustable desks, conference rooms, phone booths, well‑stocked kitchens full of snacks and drinks, three in‑house prepared meals daily, outdoor space for working and socializing, wellness rooms, private bike storage, and more.

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.

Equal Opportunity Employer Statement

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.

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.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities.