Senior Counsel, Commercial (Health and Life Sciences)

OpenAI, Inc.; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Relocation assistance

Hybrid schedule

Remote candidates considered

Job summary

OpenAI is seeking an experienced commercial attorney to join the US-based legal team in San Francisco. You will lead commercial legal support for OpenAI’s growing business, negotiating high-impact agreements and building scalable contracting frameworks.

The role is hybrid (3 days in the office) with remote candidates considered and relocation assistance available. You will partner with Go-To-Market, Partnerships, Procurement, Finance, Product, Infrastructure, and Engineering, handling life

Qualifications

• 10+ years of relevant legal experience, including drafting and negotiating complex commercial agreements.
• Experience with life sciences transactions.
• Familiarity with HIPAA and health data transactions.
• Ability to translate legal and commercial complexity into clear, actionable business guidance.
• Strong judgment, ownership, and escalation skills.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the legal partner for OpenAI’s business transactions and partnerships, focusing on life sciences.
• Provide practical, business-oriented legal advice to GTM, Partnerships, and Research teams.
• Draft, structure, and negotiate enterprise agreements with customers, vendors, and partners.
• Coordinate with IP, privacy, security, regulatory, and product teams on related issues.
• Lead negotiations with multiple stakeholders and offer clear options.
• Develop templates, playbooks, and training to streamline contracting processes.
• Monitor regulatory and compliance matters affecting AI and technology in life sciences.
• Collaborate with OpenAI’s global legal team for jurisdictional alignment.

Skills

Contract negotiation

Commercial agreements

HIPAA knowledge

Regulatory affairs

Life sciences

Job description

About the Team

OpenAI’s Legal team plays a crucial role in advancing our mission by tackling innovative and fundamental legal issues in AI. The team includes professionals from diverse legal fields – technology, AI, infrastructure, privacy, IP, corporate, employment, tax, regulatory, and litigation – who collaborate closely with colleagues across the company.

If you are passionate about being a technology lawyer working on cutting-edge challenges, you’ll thrive here.

About the Role

We are seeking an experienced attorney to join our commercial legal team. Based in the US, you will help lead commercial legal support for OpenAI’s rapidly growing business, working with teams such as GTM, Partnerships, Procurement, Finance, Product, Infrastructure, and Engineering.

This is a great opportunity to join OpenAI’s commercial legal team, negotiating high-impact agreements and helping to build scalable frameworks for responsible growth.

This role is based in San Francisco, CA, where we follow a hybrid schedule of 3 days in the office per week. Remote candidates will also be considered, and we offer relocation assistance to new employees.

In this role, you will:

• Serve as the legal partner for OpenAI’s business transactions, partnerships, and operations, with a focus on life sciences.

• Provide practical, business-oriented legal advice to teams including Go-to-Market, Partnerships, and Research.

• Draft, structure, and negotiate complex commercial agreements with enterprise customers, vendors, and strategic partners, including transactions involving life sciences.

• Identify and coordinate issues involving intellectual property, privacy, security, regulatory requirements, and product use with the appropriate specialist teams.

• Lead negotiations and manage multiple stakeholders, escalating consequential issues with clear options and recommendations.

• Develop and improve templates, playbooks, processes, and training that make routine contracting more efficient and consistent.

• Monitor and advise on regulatory and compliance matters affecting AI and technology in life sciences.

• Collaborate with colleagues across OpenAI’s global legal team to ensure alignment across jurisdictions.

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Have 10+ years of relevant legal experience, including substantial responsibility for drafting and negotiating complex commercial agreements.

• Have experience with life sciences transactions.

• Are familiar with HIPAA and transactions involving health data.

• Can translate legal and commercial complexity into clear, actionable advice for business stakeholders and senior leaders.

• Exercise sound judgment, take ownership, and move matters forward when facts are incomplete or circumstances change.

• Build trust across functions and can communicate a principled position while working constructively toward a solution.

• Enjoy improving processes and creating practical tools that help a growing team scale.

• Are curious about technology and motivated to learn about AI and its commercial implications.

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 Aff… 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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