Senior Legal Program Manager - Regulatory Compliance

OpenAI; Chicago (IL); Hybrid; USD 110,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

OpenAI is seeking a Senior Legal Program Manager for regulatory compliance to lead cross-functional initiatives. This position involves ensuring compliance with evolving global regulations in AI, collaborating with various internal teams, and establishing legal frameworks. Ideal candidates will have significant experience in legal program management, a proactive approach to project ownership, and familiarity with AI and data governance.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of experience in legal program management.
• Experience building and scaling compliance programs.
• Familiarity with AI regulation and data governance.

Responsibilities

• Lead regulatory compliance programs across global jurisdictions.
• Build systems to track and operationalize regulatory requirements.
• Coordinate responses for regulatory inquiries and audits.

Skills

Regulatory compliance

Project management

Risk management

Collaboration

Education

Juris Doctor (JD) or equivalent.

Job description

About the Team

OpenAI's Legal team plays a crucial role in furthering OpenAI's mission by tackling innovative, fundamental legal issues in AI. If you're passionate about doing significant and unique work as a technology lawyer, this team is for you. The team comprises legal professionals from diverse fields, including technology, privacy, IP, corporate, cybersecurity, employment, tax, regulatory, and litigation.

About the Role

As a Senior Legal Program Manager focused on regulatory compliance, you will lead and manage large-scale, cross-functional initiatives to ensure OpenAI meets its obligations under evolving global regulatory frameworks. Your work will span areas such as AI governance, risk management, transparency, as well as privacy and model compliance. This role places you at the center of emerging legal and compliance challenges in artificial intelligence.

You will collaborate closely with other legal program managers and product teams, and partner with internal and external counsel to build and execute compliance programs that scale. You’ll help define operational systems and legal infrastructure to proactively address regulatory requirements across OpenAI’s products and practices. This is a unique opportunity to shape how cutting-edge AI technology is responsibly developed and deployed within a complex legal and regulatory landscape.

This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.

In this role, you will:

• Lead regulatory compliance programs and frameworks across global jurisdictions (US, EMEA, and APAC).

• Build systems and processes to track, assess, and operationalize regulatory requirements across OpenAI; perform risk assessments.

• Partner with legal, policy, product, engineering, and operations teams to align internal practices with external commitments and legal obligations.

• Support regulatory inquiries, audits, and investigations by coordinating responses and ensuring timely, accurate communication.

• Help establish and maintain documentation and reporting infrastructure to demonstrate compliance readiness and program effectiveness.

• Identify risks and drive cross-functional resolution strategies in collaboration with subject-matter experts.

You might thrive in this role if you:

• 6+ years of experience in legal program management, regulatory compliance, and related fields within a tech-forward or highly regulated environment.

• Demonstrated experience building and scaling compliance programs.

• Familiarity with AI regulation, data governance, privacy, or emerging technology law is a strong plus.

• Proactively take ownership of projects by setting and achieving milestones and synthesizing input from cross-functional partners.

• Have solid organizational and project management skills, a strong sense of ownership, and enthusiasm about AI technology; enjoy being continually challenged and can demonstrate sound judgment in ambiguous situations.

• Use a mixture of scrappy building when needed and more formal methodologies like Lean principles or PMP.

• Have the ability to navigate fast-paced technical environments.

• Familiarity with data science principles/analysis a plus.

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.

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with applicable law, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act. 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.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link.

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