Strategic Sourcing Leader - Enterprise & Engineering Technology

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.

Requirements

• 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.
• Manage experienced sourcing professionals or category leads, and know how to build clarity, accountability, ownership, and sustainable team performance.
• Influence senior stakeholders and mentor peers through strong communication, structured thinking, commercial judgment, and calm leadership.
• Build 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.

Qualifications

• Experience with AI and machine learning technologies is a plus.
• Strong understanding of legal and regulatory requirements related to supplier management.
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, with the ability to influence senior stakeholders and build strong partnerships.
• Ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously and meet tight deadlines.
• Proven track record of developing and implementing sourcing strategies that drive business value.

Skills

• Strategic thinking and problem-solving skills.
• Strong negotiation and contract management skills.
• Excellent organizational and project management skills.
• Ability to work effectively in a fast-paced, dynamic environment.
• Experience with AI and machine learning technologies is a plus.

Benefits

We offer a competitive compensation package, including a salary range of $266K - $295K, relocation assistance, and a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week.

Pay

$266K - $295K

Schedule

Hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week.

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. 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. OpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy 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.