Support Operations Manager

OpenAI, Inc.; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 279,000 - 310,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Relocation assistance

Hybrid work model

Travel 1–2 weeks per quarter

Job summary

OpenAI is seeking a Support Operations Manager who combines operational leadership, systems thinking, vendor management, and hands-on execution to own service health, automation programs, and partner management. You’ll identify opportunities to reduce manual work and help operationalize AI across support at scale.

This role is based in San Francisco with a hybrid work model, relocation assistance, and travel 1–2 weeks per quarter.

Qualifications

• Have 10+ years of experience in support operations, including 4+ years leading senior individual contributors with coaching, accountability, and automation adoption at scale.
• Comfortable managing a team while staying hands-on in solving ambiguous operational problems.
• Fluent in operational data and technical collaboration; define metrics, interpret dashboards, design experiments, and partner with engineering/data teams to scale complex problems.

Responsibilities

• Lead and evolve organizational design for frontline operations across partner and vendor management, coaching teams to expand automation and deliver measurable capacity gains.
• Lead multi-site partner management, including commercial ownership, capacity planning and workforce management, QBRs, and performance recovery.
• Own end-to-end service governance for partner and vendor teams, including automation rate, cost to serve, first-response time, productivity, and quality.
• Set standards for how work gets done at scale, replacing one-off fixes with reusable systems.
• Upskill teams and partner with Automation Engineering, Support Engineering, and Fraud & Risk to embed LLM-powered tools into frontline workflows.

Skills

Operational leadership

Vendor management

Systems thinking

Cross-functional collaboration

Tools

Automation tooling

Job description

The Support team is central to ensuring that our customers' experience with our products is nothing short of exceptional. We resolve complex issues, provide technical guidance, and support customers in maximizing value and adoption from deploying our products. We work closely with Sales, Technical Success, Product, Engineering and others to deliver the best possible experience to our customers at scale. OpenAI's customers represent a range of diverse backgrounds and maturity, from individual customers to early-stage startups and established global enterprises. Given OpenAI’s breakneck shipping cadence and growth – and the expectation that it will only accelerate – our ability to architect automation systems and agentic workflows for scale is central to our ability to maintain exceptional support quality in the face of AGI.

About the Role

We are seeking a Support Operations Manager who combines operational leadership, systems thinking, vendor management, and hands-on execution. You’ll own service health, automation programs, partner and vendor management. In addition to delivering high-quality service, you’ll identify opportunities to reduce manual work, experiment with tools and help operationalize AI across support at scale.

This is not a traditional support operations lead role. We’re looking for someone to help us define the future of support, who thrive at the intersection of team/project management, systems building, data science/engineering, and with deep craft experience in the support operations space.

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. 1-2 weeks of travel per quarter may be required.

In this role, you will:

Lead and evolve organizational design for our frontline operations across partner and vendor management, coaching teams to expand automation and deliver measurable capacity gains.

Lead multi-site partner management, including commercial ownership, capacity planning and workforce management, QBRs, and performance recovery.

Own end-to-end service governance for partner and vendor teams, including automation rate, cost to serve, first-response time, productivity, and quality.

Set standards for how work gets done at scale, replacing one-off fixes with reusable systems.

Upskill teams and partner with Automation Engineering, Support Engineering, and Fraud & Risk to embed LLM-powered tools into frontline workflows.

You might thrive in this role if you:

Have 10+ years of experience in support operations including 4+ years leading senior individual contributors with a strong track record of coaching, driving accountability, and improving performance and automation adoption at scale.

Are comfortable managing a team while staying hands-on in solving ambiguous operational problems.

Are fluent in operational data and technical collaboration, able to define metrics, interpret dashboards, design experiments, and partner with engineering and data teams to turn ambiguous support problems into scalable systems.

Think in systems, using process design, data, tooling, and automation to reduce manual work and create durable capacity.

Can partner credibly with technical teams and translate support needs into clear requirements, owning problem definition, adoption, change management, and operational outcomes.

Are energized by building structure in a high-growth environment where the support model, tooling, and partner strategy are still evolving.

Have scaled support operations through organizational design and tooling in a high-growth technology company without compromising quality.

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.

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.

To notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant, please submit a report through this form . No response will be provided to inquiries unrelated to job posting compliance.

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

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

$279K – $310K + Offers Equity

The base pay offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factors, including market location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. If the role is non-exempt, overtime pay will be provided consistent with applicable laws. In addition to the salary range listed above, total compensation also includes generous equity, performance-related bonus(es) for eligible employees, and the following benefits.

Medical, dental, and vision insurance for you and your family, with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts

Pre-tax accounts for Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and commuter expenses (parking and transit)

401(k) retirement plan with employer match

Paid parental leave (up to 24 weeks for birth parents and 20 weeks for non-birthing parents), plus paid medical and caregiver leave (up to 8 weeks)

Paid time off: flexible PTO for exempt employees and up to 15 days annually for non-exempt employees

13+ paid company holidays, and multiple paid coordinated company office closures throughout the year for focus and recharge, plus paid sick or safe time (1 hour per 30 hours worked, or more, as required by applicable state or local law)

Mental health and wellness support

Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage

Annual learning and development stipend to fuel your professional growth

Daily meals in our offices, and meal delivery credits as eligible

Relocation support for eligible employees

Additional taxable fringe benefits, such as charitable donation matching and wellness stipends, may also be provided.

More details about our benefits are available to candidates during the hiring process.

This role is at-will and OpenAI reserves the right to modify base pay and other compensation components at any time based on individual performance, team or company results, or market conditions.