Frontier AI Research · San Francisco
About the Team
OpenAI’s Strategic Sourcing team helps the company scale responsibly, efficiently, and at speed. We partner with technical and business leaders across Engineering, Security, IT, Finance, Legal, and Privacy to shape supplier strategy, negotiate critical agreements, and build resilient supplier ecosystems that support OpenAI’s mission.
Within Strategic Sourcing, this team manages strategic supplier relationships across engineering platforms, infrastructure software, security technology, enterprise systems, IT, and hardware. Our work connects technical roadmaps, commercial strategy, supplier leverage, financial discipline, operational resilience, and security.
About the Role
OpenAI is seeking a Strategic Sourcing, Enterprise & Engineering Technology Leader to lead complex technology sourcing work across a portfolio critical to how our teams build, secure, operate, and scale. This role will report to the Senior Director / Head of Strategic Sourcing.
This is a senior sourcing leadership role for a recognized expert who can shape category direction, lead multiple complex workstreams, influence senior stakeholders, and solve high-stakes commercial problems with structured thinking and deep expertise. You will manage experienced sourcing professionals, guide strategic supplier negotiations, and help build scalable sourcing practices that strengthen OpenAI’s growth.
You will partner closely with the CTO, CISO, IT, Finance, Legal, Privacy, and business organizations to translate technical needs, security requirements, supplier constraints, adoption patterns, and long-term operating priorities into clear sourcing strategies and commercial structures.
You will also build and improve the operating system for the category, including category cards, negotiation playbooks, reporting mechanisms, supplier governance, coordinator workflows, and executive communication rhythms. You will be at the forefront of enabling AI within sourcing workflows, helping the team use AI to improve intake, market analysis, negotiation preparation, reporting, documentation, and decision quality.
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 sourcing strategy and execution across enterprise and engineering technology categories, including infrastructure software, engineering platforms, security technology, enterprise systems, IT, and hardware.
Independently define, prioritize, and lead multiple complex sourcing workstreams, shaping supplier strategy and commercial decisions without regular oversight.
Own strategic supplier negotiations, including major renewals, enterprise license agreements, infrastructure software commitments, security technology agreements, engineering platform agreements, and hardware-related sourcing decisions.
Manage and develop experienced category leads, creating clarity, improving commercial judgment, and empowering the team to deliver strategic goals without heavy managerial intervention.
Build scalable category tools and frameworks, including category cards, negotiation playbooks, supplier segmentation, renewal calendars, reporting dashboards, and escalation paths.
Partner with senior leaders across the CTO, CISO, and IT organizations to translate technical roadmaps, security requirements, platform dependencies, adoption plans, performance needs, and supplier constraints into sourcing strategies and commercial structures.
Advise senior leaders on major supplier decisions by presenting clear deal narratives, financial impact, risk, tradeoffs, supplier context, and recommendations.
Create cost and commercial structures aligned to OpenAI’s business model, including usage-based pricing, flexible consumption models, pooled commitments, ramp structures, scale protections, and performance-based economics.
Set direction for coordinators and category partners supporting quick-turn negotiations, ensuring routine work moves quickly with consistent standards, strong documentation, and appropriate escalation.
Establish supplier governance and portfolio reporting across pipeline health, savings, risk, renewal exposure, supplier performance, forecast accuracy, QBRs, escalation management, and value realization.
Influence difficult or highly opinionated stakeholders by building trust, clarifying tradeoffs, creating alignment, and positioning sourcing as a strategic partner in technical, security, and commercial decision-making.
You might thrive in this role if you:
Have 12+ years of experience in strategic sourcing / procurement, with significant depth in enterprise technology, infrastructure software, engineering tools, security technology, IT platforms, hardware, or adjacent technology categories.
Bring 5+ years of people leadership experience, ideally including leading people managers.
Have led complex, high-stakes supplier negotiations and can balance cost, leverage, speed, flexibility, risk, security requirements, and long-term partnership value.
Can independently lead multiple complex workstreams, prioritize tradeoffs, and shape strategic decisions in ambiguous environments.
Have managed experienced sourcing professionals or category leads, and know how to build clarity, accountability, ownership, and sustainable team performance.
Can influence senior stakeholders and mentor peers through strong communication, structured thinking, commercial judgment, and calm leadership.
Have built scalable sourcing tools or operating mechanisms, such as category cards, negotiation playbooks, reporting dashboards, supplier governance models, or renewal planning processes.
Know how to create commercial models that go beyond standard enterprise pricing and reflect usage growth, technical adoption, platform dependency, security requirements, and OpenAI’s business model.
Care deeply about responsible growth, disciplined supplier management, inclusive leadership, and building sourcing as a strategic lever for OpenAI.
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. 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.
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