Strategic Partnerships Lead

OpenAI; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

OpenAI is seeking a Business Lead in San Francisco to own a strategically important partnership. You will be the day-to-day driver, setting direction, building operating cadence, and delivering measurable outcomes across internal and partner teams.

This is a hands-on leadership role: you will develop plans, drive negotiations, craft decision materials, and execute joint go-to-market motions with enterprise customers. Strong product judgment and cross-functional influence are essential.

Qualifications

• Substantial experience leading high-stakes business operations, strategic partnerships, product operations, or complex cross-functional programs.
• A track record as the accountable operator for consequential outcomes, not only as an advisor or coordinator.
• Excellent program leadership and organizational skills, with a bias toward simple mechanisms that improve decisions and execution.
• Exceptional internal and external relationship leadership, including candid communication, conflict resolution, and expectation management.
• Strong product judgment and sufficient technical fluency to become deeply familiar with product stacks and integration theses.
• Commercial judgment and negotiation experience across economics, packaging, delivery commitments, and long-term strategic value.
• High agency, low ego, sound judgment, and willingness to do the detailed work.
• Clear, concise executive communication and exceptional follow-through in fast-moving environments.

Responsibilities

• Own the integrated partnership strategy and operating plan with clear priorities, outcomes, owners, dependencies, and decision points.
• Drive the highest-priority initiatives from problem definition through decision, implementation, and measurable outcomes.
• Build and run a rigorous internal and external operating cadence for decision velocity and risk visibility.
• Develop trusted relationships across executive, commercial, product, technical, legal, finance, and deployment stakeholders.
• Translate partnership priorities into commercial, product, technical, deployment, and go-to-market workstreams.
• Stand up a joint go-to-market motion and drive the first cohort of joint customers from targeting to execution.
• Form an opinionated view on integration, and translate it into roadmap choices with Product, Engineering, and deployment teams.
• Prepare executive decisions and escalate only material commitments that require sponsor approval.
• Deliver the required work through analysis, writing, negotiation prep, reviews, escalation, and follow-through.

Skills

Senior leadership

Partnership operations

Program management

Executive communication

Cross-functional collaboration

Product judgment

Negotiation

Risk management

Job description

OpenAI is seeking a Business Lead in San Francisco to own a strategically important partnership. You will be the day-to-day driver, setting direction, building operating cadence, and delivering measurable outcomes across internal and partner teams.

This is a hands-on leadership role: you will develop plans, drive negotiations, craft decision materials, and execute joint go-to-market motions with enterprise customers. Strong product judgment and cross-functional influence are essential.