Professional Services Commercial Lead

OpenAI, Inc.; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 211,000 - 234,000; Full time

Job summary

OpenAI is seeking a hands-on Professional Services Commercial Lead in San Francisco to own the end-to-end deal desk workflow. You will draft and revise SOWs, validate pricing, and coordinate cross-functional reviews with Legal, Finance, and Sales to ensure clear, executable engagements.

You will translate technical requirements into contract-ready scope and milestones, manage complex deals, and drive strong templates and workflows that accelerate delivery and revenue realization.

Qualifications

• Typically 7+ years of relevant B2B experience across deal desk, commercial contracts or contract management, professional-services operations, sales operations, order management, or a similar function.
• 3+ years of substantial, hands-on experience drafting and revising customer-facing SOWs for professional-services engagements.
• Experience operating pricing-validation, commercial intake, approval, and routing workflows alongside contract drafting and review.
• The ability to translate technical or service requirements into contract-ready scope, deliverables, milestones, dependencies, acceptance criteria, and change controls.

Responsibilities

• Own assigned DeployCo deals from intake through approval, signature, and operational handoff.
• Draft and revise SOWs, work orders, and change orders using approved templates and playbooks; partner with Legal on non-standard contractual terms and redlines.
• Validate rate cards, fees, hours and resourcing inputs, discounts, margin inputs, billing milestones, and key deal data against approved inputs and guardrails; reconcile the SOW to the quote and route exceptions with a clear recommendation.
• Coordinate reviews and approvals across Deployment, Sales, Legal, Finance, Technical Revenue, Billing, and Order Management; surface gaps early and keep stakeholders aligned on next steps.
• Identify and coordinate resolution of delivery and commercial risks, including unclear scope or acceptance criteria, infeasible commitments, scope creep, inconsistent documents, and downstream billing or revenue implications.
• Maintain accurate deal records, approval evidence, and status updates; meet internal turnaround commitments and ensure a clean post-signature handoff.
• Turn recurring issues into stronger templates, playbooks, approval paths, and workflow improvements that increase deal quality and speed.

Skills

Deal desk leadership

SOW drafting

Pricing validation

Cross-functional coordination

Contract management

Communication

Independent ownership

Tools

Salesforce/CPQ

Contract lifecycle tools

Job description

Professional Services Commercial Lead | OpenAI

Careers

Professional Services Commercial Lead

Finance - San Francisco

About the Team

The DeployCo Deal Desk helps turn customer deployment opportunities into clear, executable professional-services engagements. We partner across Deployment, Sales, Legal, Finance, Technical Revenue, and Operations to ensure every deal has a well-defined scope, pricing aligned to approved guardrails, complete approvals, and a clean handoff to delivery.

The team sits at the intersection of commercial execution and delivery readiness. We make complex services deals easier to buy—and easier to deliver—while strengthening the templates and workflows that help DeployCo scale.

About the Role

We are hiring a hands-on Professional Services Commercial Lead to own the end-to-end deal desk workflow for assigned DeployCo professional-services engagements. You will personally draft and revise statements of work (SOWs), validate pricing and deal inputs, coordinate cross-functional reviews and approvals, and ensure commitments are clear, deliverable, and ready to execute.

The differentiator in this role is drafting expertise: you have written SOWs, not simply routed them. You can turn technical and delivery inputs into precise scope, deliverables, milestones, assumptions, dependencies, acceptance criteria, fees, and change controls—then keep the deal moving.

This is an individual-contributor role for an experienced contract manager, deal desk professional, or professional-services commercial operator who combines strong writing and commercial judgment with disciplined execution.

What You’ll Do

• Own assigned DeployCo deals from intake through approval, signature, and operational handoff.
• Draft and revise SOWs, work orders, and change orders using approved templates and playbooks; partner with Legal on non-standard contractual terms and redlines.
• Validate rate cards, fees, hours and resourcing inputs, discounts, margin inputs, billing milestones, and key deal data against approved inputs and guardrails; reconcile the SOW to the quote and route exceptions with a clear recommendation.
• Coordinate reviews and approvals across Deployment, Sales, Legal, Finance, Technical Revenue, Billing, and Order Management; surface gaps early and keep stakeholders aligned on next steps.
• Identify and coordinate resolution of delivery and commercial risks, including unclear scope or acceptance criteria, infeasible commitments, scope creep, inconsistent documents, and downstream billing or revenue implications.
• Maintain accurate deal records, approval evidence, and status updates; meet internal turnaround commitments and ensure a clean post-signature handoff.
• Turn recurring issues into stronger templates, playbooks, approval paths, and workflow improvements that increase deal quality and speed.

What You Bring

• Typically 7+ years of relevant B2B experience across deal desk, commercial contracts or contract management, professional-services operations, sales operations, order management, or a similar function.
• 3+ years of substantial, hands-on experience drafting and revising customer-facing SOWs for professional-services engagements.
• Experience operating pricing-validation, commercial intake, approval, and routing workflows alongside contract drafting and review.
• The ability to translate technical or service requirements into contract-ready scope, deliverables, milestones, dependencies, acceptance criteria, and change controls.
• Sound judgment and independent ownership of complex or non-standard deals, including the ability to recommend a practical path forward and escalation the highest-risk issues.
• Working knowledge of quote-to-cash and how SOW structure and pricing affect delivery, billing, revenue recognition, and the customer experience.
• Clear, concise communication; excellent attention to detail; and the ability to manage multiple time-sensitive deals while influencing partners without formal authority.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience as a contract manager supporting customer-facing professional services, consulting, implementation, or managed services.
• Experience in cloud, enterprise SaaS, AI, or another complex technology environment.
• Familiarity with fixed-fee, milestone-based, and time-and-materials services engagements.
• Experience with Salesforce or CPQ, contract-lifecycle-management tools, e‑signature platforms, and approval workflow systems.
• A track record of improving SOW templates, commercial playbooks, or deal workflows.

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 affirmative 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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Compensation

$211K – $234K + Offers Equity

The base pay offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factors, including market location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. If the role is non-exempt, overtime pay will be provided consistent with applicable laws. In addition to the salary range listed above, total compensation also includes generous equity, performance-related bonus(es) for eligible employees, and the following benefits.

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance for you and your family, with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts
• Pre-tax accounts for Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and commuter expenses (parking and transit)
• 401(k) retirement plan with employer match
• Paid parental leave (up to 24 weeks for birth parents and 20 weeks for non-birthing parents), plus paid medical and caregiver leave (up to 8 weeks)
• Paid time off: flexible PTO for exempt employees and up to 15 days annually for non-exempt employees
• 13+ paid company holidays, and multiple paid coordinated company office closures throughout the year for focus and recharge, plus paid sick or safe time (1 hour per 30 hours worked, or more, as required by applicable state or local law)
• Mental health and wellness support
• Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage
• Annual learning and development stipend to fuel your professional growth
• Daily meals in our offices, and meal delivery credits as eligible
• Relocation support for eligible employees
• Additional taxable fringe benefits, such as charitable donation matching and wellness stipends, may also be provided.

More details about our benefits are available to candidates during the hiring process.

This role is at-will and OpenAI reserves the right to modify base pay and other compensation components at any time based on individual performance, team or company results, or market conditions.