Principal - Strategic Partnerships Lead

OpenAI, Inc.; New York (NY); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

OpenAI Deployment Company (DeployCo) in New York is seeking a Strategic Partnerships Lead to build and scale enterprise partnerships, focusing on cloud and consulting collaborations.

You will define partnership strategies, negotiate agreements, and work with OpenAI teams to bring compelling joint offerings to market. The role requires strategic judgment, commercial experience, and the ability to navigate complex ecosystems in a fast-paced environment.

Qualifications

• 7+ years in strategic partnerships or business development in tech.
• Experience building and scaling partner programs and ecosystems.
• Strong negotiation and deal-structuring skills with Legal/Finance.
• Technical fluency to discuss APIs, enterprise integrations, and deployments.

Responsibilities

• Design, build and scale cloud and consulting partnerships; define partner value, incentives, agreements, and operating models.
• Deliver measurable commercial impact through joint business plans; track pipeline and adoption.
• Lead cross-functional collaboration across legal, finance, sales, engineering, and delivery.
• Build trusted executive relationships with senior partners and align priorities.

Skills

Strategic partnerships

Business development

Platform product management

Strategic alliances

Job description

About the Company

The OpenAI Deployment Company (“DeployCo”) is the deployment arm of OpenAI, purpose-built to deliver enterprise AI transformation at scale. As model capabilities accelerate, deployment has become the primary constraint to realizing AI value creation within large enterprises. DeployCo bridges that gap.

Our ambition is to build the company that defines AI deployment. We operate at the intersection of cutting-edge AI, enterprise transformation, and scaled services delivery. We partner with enterprise customers to identify where AI can transform their businesses and build solutions leveraging OpenAI’s models and products. We work with many of the world's largest and most influential companies to solve their most complex business challenges using the latest advances in AI.

People who thrive at DeployCo get excited about ambitious and complex work. We are deep believers in the future with AI. We execute quickly, value intellectual honesty, and obsess over the solutions we build for our customers.

DeployCo is being built from the ground up as a subsidiary of OpenAI and funded with a partnership of outside investors.

About the Role

We’re looking for a Strategic Partnerships Lead to build and scale new cloud and consulting partnerships on behalf of DeployCon. With the executive team, you will define where partnerships can create the greatest value, develop a strategy, and establish new programs and operating models to produce sustained commercial results.

This is an opportunity to build from the ground up: building relationships with new partners, shaping compelling joint offerings, negotiating agreements, and bringing those offerings to life. You will work closely with DeployCo leadership, legal, finance, commercial and technical teams, and close counterparts at OpenAI to align priorities and drive execution.

You should bring the strategic judgment to decide what to build, the commercial experience to make it successful, and the operating discipline to carry it through.

What success looks like: DeployCo has a focused partnership strategy, a repeatable program, and an active portfolio delivering measurable commercial value. Partners understand how to work with us, internal teams have clear ownership, and successful collaborations help more customers deploy AI effectively.

In this role, you will:

• Design, build and launch new partnership programs. Create a clear partner value proposition, commercial incentives, legal agreements, and operating model – including onboarding, enablement, and governance. Turn initial successes into programs that scale effectively for DeployCo and work across customers.

• Deliver measurable commercial impact for the business. Build joint business plans that generate new qualified pipeline, revenue, customer adoption, and expansion. Set targets, track performance, and adjust or exit initiatives when results fall short. Calibrate expectation and performance with partner organizations.

• Lead and collaborate across functions and organizations. In order to build and scale partnerships, effectively bring together key stakeholders across legal, finance, sales, engineering, and delivery to make clear decisions, divide responsibilities, and hit key milestones. Project manage complex workstreams, resolve competing priorities and advance high pace initiatives.

• Build trusted executive relationships. Represent DeployCo with senior leaders at partners establish shared priorities and remain accountable for the health and performance of each relationship.

You may thrive in this role if you:

• 7+ years of experience in strategic partnerships, business development, platform product management or strategic alliances within the technology sector. Significant experience in strategic partnerships, alliances, business development, or ecosystem leadership within enterprise technology.

• Experience in high-growth startup or fast-paced technology environments.

• Built something from scratch, such as a partnerships function, alliance strategy, or large-scale partner program that you personally took from an initial thesis to launch and scale.

• A demonstrated commercial track record. You can point to programs you owned, explain the commercial model and your contribution, and quantify the pipeline, revenue, adoption, or customer outcomes they produced.

• Strong commercial judgment and negotiation skills, including experience evaluating partnership economics and structuring complex agreements alongside Legal and Finance.

• A record of leading cross-functional initiatives through influence, aligning senior stakeholders, and translating broad goals into completed work.

• Practical technical fluency. You can discuss APIs, enterprise integrations, data requirements, and AI deployment considerations with technical counterparts, ask informed questions, and translate constraints into sound partnership decisions.

• Comfort operating with ambiguity, making decisions with incomplete information, and moving between long-term planning and detailed execution.

• Clear communication, strong relationship-building skills, and a willingness to take personal ownership of results.