Business Operations Lead

About The Team

The Business Operations team at OpenAI tackles high-priority initiatives spanning strategic projects, pricing, partnerships, revenue strategy, and major business and product priorities. Working closely with the COO and business leadership team, we play a pivotal role in advancing OpenAI’s most important initiatives and ensuring the company operates with clarity and focus. To thrive in this team, you need to be a proactive problem-solver who excels at bringing structure to ambiguous challenges. Our work demands strategic thinking, cross-functional collaboration, and precision in execution. Team members succeed when they are analytical, detail-oriented, skilled at balancing multiple priorities, and passionate about driving high-stakes projects forward to deliver meaningful results.

About The Role

We’re hiring a Business Operations Lead to help drive some of OpenAI’s most important strategic and operational initiatives. This role will partner closely with senior leaders to tackle high-impact problems that cut across product, go-to-market, partnerships, pricing, finance, and broader business strategy. This role is designed to flex with company priorities — taking on the problems that matter most at a given moment and carrying them from early framing through execution. You’ll help translate high-level ambitions into clear strategies, operating plans, and decisions, and ensure that complex, cross-functional efforts move forward with speed and clarity. You’ll work closely with leaders across the company to evaluate opportunities, clarify tradeoffs, and align teams around a coherent path forward. The work will span everything from shaping product and commercial strategy, to evaluating new markets or business models, to driving execution on company-wide initiatives. Success in this role requires strong judgment and range. You should be comfortable zooming out to assess strategic direction and right-to-win, while also diving deep into the details — whether that’s a product roadmap, a market or customer analysis, a financial model, or an operating plan. You’ll help ensure that OpenAI’s most ambitious efforts are not only technically excellent, but strategically sound, commercially viable, and executed effectively.

In This Role, You Will

• Own and drive high-priority strategic and operational initiatives across the business, working closely with product, GTM, partnerships, finance, and leadership teams.
• Act as a force multiplier on critical initiatives by accelerating decision-making, driving clarity, and ensuring projects move from intent to outcomes.
• Partner with leaders to define strategy, operating plans, and success metrics for critical initiatives.
• Apply rigorous analysis to complex problems, using data and structured thinking to inform decisions — while staying focused on real-world impact over perfect answers.
• Drive alignment across teams by translating strategy into clear priorities, programs, and execution plans.
• Identify risks, gaps, and tradeoffs early, and work cross-functionally to resolve them.
• Communicate insights, progress, and recommendations clearly to executive stakeholders.

You Might Thrive In This Role If You

• Have 8+ years of experience across business operations, product, strategy, or similar roles.
• Are comfortable owning complex problems that span multiple functions and require strong judgment under uncertainty.
• Are a deeply analytical thinker, but a doer at heart — you use analysis to drive action, not just create slides.
• Can move fluidly between big-picture strategic framing and hands-on execution.
• Take pride in seeing work through to outcomes, not just recommendations.
• Have experience partnering with senior leaders and influencing decisions across teams.
• Excel in fast-moving environments where priorities evolve and clarity needs to be created.
• Are an excellent communicator who can build alignment and momentum across diverse stakeholders.
• Are deeply curious about AI, technology, and how new products and businesses scale.

Key skills/competency

• Strategic Planning
• Business Analysis
• Cross-functional Collaboration
• Financial Modeling
• Go-to-Market Strategy
• Project Management
• Problem Solving
• Executive Communication
• Data-driven Decision Making
• Operational Excellence