Senior Technical Recruiter, Engineering Leadership

OpenAI; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 172,000 - 295,000; Full time

Job summary

OpenAI’s Recruiting team seeks an experienced technical recruiter to own leadership searches, from role definition to offer negotiation and close. You will partner with senior engineering leaders and hiring managers to define requirements, map talent, and execute targeted searches for engineering managers and senior leaders across Applied Foundations.

You will engage passive candidates, assess leadership capabilities, and navigate complex negotiations while maintaining a high-standard candidate

Qualifications

• Experience in executive search or in-house leadership recruiting.
• Ability to own end-to-end leadership searches from mapping to close.
• Strong partnering with senior engineering leaders and hiring teams.

Responsibilities

• Lead full-cycle searches for engineering managers and senior leaders across Applied Foundations.
• Define role scope, leadership expectations, and technical requirements with hiring leaders.
• Develop talent maps and targeted search strategies using direct sourcing and referrals.
• Engage passive leadership candidates with thoughtful outreach and conversations about impact at OpenAI.
• Assess leadership capabilities, build teams, and guide managers through change.
• Advise on market intelligence, revisit requirements, broaden talent pools when needed.
• Own complex closing strategies with compensation and offer considerations.
• Maintain rigorous search cadence, communicate progress, and deliver a strong candidate experience.
• Share insights to improve assessment and help teammates navigate challenging searches.

Skills

Executive search

Leadership recruitment

Stakeholder management

Job description

About The Team

OpenAI’s Recruiting team helps bring together the people who advance our mission of ensuring artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. We partner closely with leaders across the company to identify exceptional talent, build thoughtful hiring processes, and deliver an outstanding candidate experience.

About The Team

OpenAI’s Recruiting team helps bring together the people who advance our mission of ensuring artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. We partner closely with leaders across the company to identify exceptional talent, build thoughtful hiring processes, and deliver an outstanding candidate experience.

This role supports Applied Foundations, partnering with engineering leaders to hire the managers and senior leaders who will help build and scale OpenAI’s foundational engineering capabilities.

About The Role

We’re looking for an experienced technical recruiter with a strong track record of hiring engineering leaders. You’ll own leadership searches from initial role definition and talent mapping through assessment, offer negotiation, and close.

You’ll serve as a trusted advisor to senior engineering leaders, helping clarify what each role requires, understand the talent market, and make thoughtful hiring decisions. You’ll bring the judgment to navigate ambiguous searches, the credibility to engage accomplished engineering leaders, and the persistence to build relationships well before someone is ready to make a move.

Experience in executive search or an in-house leadership recruiting function is particularly valuable. You should be equally comfortable shaping a search strategy and personally doing the work to deliver a successful hire.

In This Role, You Will

• Lead full-cycle searches for engineering managers and senior engineering leaders across Applied Foundations.
• Partner with hiring leaders to define role scope, leadership expectations, technical requirements, and the outcomes a successful hire will deliver.
• Develop talent maps and targeted search strategies, combining direct sourcing, referrals, market research, and long-term relationship building.
• Engage passive leadership candidates through thoughtful outreach and substantive conversations about their experience, motivations, and potential impact at OpenAI.
• Partner with hiring teams to assess leadership capabilities, including building teams, developing managers, setting technical direction, and leading through change.
• Advise senior stakeholders using market intelligence and search evidence, including when to revisit requirements, broaden a talent pool, or adjust the hiring approach.
• Own complex closing strategies, partnering with hiring leaders and compensation colleagues to navigate competing opportunities, equity considerations, counteroffers, and career decisions.
• Maintain a rigorous operating rhythm across searches, communicating progress, surfacing risks early, and delivering a consistent, thoughtful candidate experience.
• Strengthen leadership recruiting practices by sharing insights, improving assessment approaches, and helping teammates navigate challenging searches.

You Might Thrive In This Role If You

• Bring substantial technical recruiting experience, with a demonstrated track record of personally owning and closing engineering leadership searches.
• Have experience in executive search, in-house leadership recruiting, or a comparable environment requiring targeted research, senior stakeholder partnership, and discretion.
• Can evaluate leadership scope beyond titles and partner with hiring managers to distinguish technical expertise, people leadership, and organizational impact.
• Build credibility with senior engineering leaders and offer clear recommendations, including constructive pushback when needed.
• Have successfully managed complex offers and understand how compensation, role scope, organizational context, and personal motivations influence a leadership candidate’s decision.
• Combine strategic judgment with strong sourcing and execution skills, taking ownership from search kickoff through close.
• Learn unfamiliar technical domains quickly and adapt effectively as priorities or role requirements evolve.
• Communicate clearly, handle sensitive information thoughtfully, and approach feedback with humility and a willingness to update your perspective.

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. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

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

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At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.

Compensation Range: $172K - $295K