Core Operations Lead, Community & Culture

Job description

About the Team OpenAI’s mission is to ensure that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We believe our research will eventually lead to artificial general intelligence, a system that can solve human-level problems. The Community & Culture Engagement team helps people discover, use, and advocate for OpenAI’s tools through community programs, social storytelling, creator partnerships, and cultural experiences. Our work connects OpenAI with the people and communities who bring its technology into everyday life. As the team grows across disciplines and markets, we need shared foundations that connect our work, make priorities clear, and help us deliver with speed and care. About the Role We’re looking for a senior operations leader to own Community & Culture’s integrated operating model. You will build and own the infrastructure that enables the team to operate as one and execute at a consistently high standard. You are accountable for keeping the plans funded, staffed and executable as priorities change. You will establish the shared practices, clear accountability, and reliable information that allow leaders to make sound decisions and teams to deliver on their commitments. This is a senior leadership role that combines organizational judgment with hands-on building. Working closely with Community & Culture leadership and partners across OpenAI, you will turn strategy into practical operating plans, anticipate risks, and guide decisions about where we invest and how we staff the work. You will build systems people trust and use, adapting them as priorities and the organization evolve. This role is based in San Francisco, CA or New York. 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: - Establish and own Community and Culture’s integrated operating model. This includes overseeing and building practical tools and workflows for financial management, resourcing, and operating reviews. - Own the team’s financial operating system. In partnership with Finance, Marketing, Partnerships and Comms leads, establish a consistent approach to budgeting, forecasting, spend approvals, and reporting across central and international teams. Maintain a trusted view of planned, committed, and actual spend. Responsible for driving tradeoff decisions, investment shifts and reallocation where needed. - Establish clear governance across the team. Define decision rights, build and own approval processes, clarify program ownership and appropriate handoffs to partner teams, and create clear escalation paths across the team. - Lead resourcing and capacity planning. Translate priorities into plans for full time, freelance, and agency remits. Identify gaps in skills and capacity, develop hiring and investment recommendations, and guide leaders through tradeoffs about where to add, shift, or sequence resources. - Build and own reliable agency and vendor operations. Partner with Procurement, Legal, and Finance to establish clear processes for scopes of work, contracts, onboarding, purchase orders, and renewals. Ensure external commitments have clear owners, funding, and expectations. Guide and hold teams accountable to measurable outcomes from pilot programs. - Raise the standard of operational execution. Establish meaningful measures of forecast quality, planning reliability, capacity, and follow-through. Anticipate issues before they affect delivery and lead improvements as the team grows. You might thrive in this role if you have: - 10+ years of experience in operations, business operations, or a related discipline, including senior leadership responsibility for a complex, growing organization. - A successful track record of owning budgets, forecasts, and financial planning processes, with the judgment to help senior leaders weigh competing investments and resource needs. - Experience building governance and ways of working that have been adopted across multiple teams, with clear improvements in accountability and execution. - Experience leading workforce and capacity planning across employees, contractors, and agencies, and translating business priorities into practical staffing decisions. - Sound judgment in ambiguity. You make progress with incomplete information, adapt as priorities change, and know when a problem calls for a conversation, a decision, or a better process. - The ability to move between organizational strategy and detailed execution. You are comfortable shaping an operating model, working through a budget or staffing plan, and staying accountable through implementation. - An understanding of creative, community, marketing, or other relationship-driven teams. Experience supporting international teams is valuable. About OpenAI OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We p