SMB Ads Innovation & Growth Lead

OpenAI; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid schedule

Job summary

OpenAI is expanding its SMB Ads team in San Francisco, leading the innovation and go-to-market strategies that connect small and medium businesses with our AI-powered advertising platform. You will partner with Product, Engineering, Sales, Marketing, and Data Science to incubate opportunities, validate product ideas, and scale pilots into repeatable programs.

The role partners with SMB leadership and Strategy & Operations to inform overall SMB strategy, offering customer segmentation, commercial

Qualifications

• 8-10 years of experience in business incubation, growth, strategy, business operations, product strategy, or consulting.
• Experience with SMB customers and self-serve business models.
• Experience taking initiatives from customer insight through pilot, launch and measurable impact.
• Strong analytical and financial modeling skills across opportunity sizing, unit economics, funnel analysis, and experimentation.

Responsibilities

• Identify untapped opportunities across SMB segments, industries, and channels. Build business cases and launch pilots to validate customer demand and commercial potential.
• Design new acquisition, activation, and expansion programs, including industry-specific and assisted-growth approaches. Partner with sales teams and outsourced sales providers to connect self-serve adoption with sales-assisted engagement.
• Translate customer discovery into product opportunities. Partner with Product and Engineering to evaluate solutions and use customer and commercial evidence to guide investment.
• Develop actionable SMB segmentation based on needs, business characteristics, advertising maturity, behavior, growth potential, and economics. Tailor acquisition, onboarding, service, and expansion across customer channels.
• Own pilot delivery and measurement across incremental revenue, conversion, customer outcomes, and cost to serve. Scale successful programs through clear playbooks and ownership; refine or retire those that miss defined success criteria.
• Shape SMB strategy and investment recommendations with leadership and Strategy & Operations, drawing on market analysis, segmentation, and pilot results.
• Lead the innovation portfolio through clear roadmaps, performance measures, and decision milestones. Resolve delivery challenges and transition proven programs into ongoing operations.

Job description

OpenAI is expanding its SMB Ads team in San Francisco, leading the innovation and go-to-market strategies that connect small and medium businesses with our AI-powered advertising platform. You will partner with Product, Engineering, Sales, Marketing, and Data Science to incubate opportunities, validate product ideas, and scale pilots into repeatable programs.

The role partners with SMB leadership and Strategy & Operations to inform overall SMB strategy, offering customer segmentation, commercial