Strategic Operations Lead, User Safety & Risk Operations

ABOUT THE TEAM

At OpenAI, our User Safety & Risk Operations (USRO) team helps protect our products and users from abuse, fraud, safety risks, and other forms of misuse. We operate at the front line of real-world safety and risk management, translating user and operational signals into timely decisions, effective interventions, and improvements to our systems.

This role sits on a new team within USRO focused on building operational capacity for new, ambiguous, or fast-moving areas of work. The team helps define what needs to be built, creates the operating model to support it, and works with partner teams to make the work scalable and durable over time.

As a Strategic Operations Lead, you will focus on large, cross-functional initiatives that require clear thinking, technical fluency, strong execution, and the ability to bring structure to undefined problems.

ABOUT THE ROLE

We are seeking a Strategic Operations Lead to drive new and existing strategic operating builds across User Safety & Risk Operations. This is a senior IC role for someone who can turn broad, undefined priorities into clear operating models, launch plans, requirements, stakeholder alignment, documentation, reporting, and execution rhythms.

This role will often support initiatives where OpenAI is developing new products or partnerships and the operating model is still being defined. These programs have a direct user safety and risk nexus because new deployment models can change what signals OpenAI can see, who owns response decisions, and how user-impacting risks are detected, escalated, and resolved. You will clarify what OpenAI owns, what partner teams own, what signals we can reliably monitor, how issues should be escalated, and how the workflow should evolve from launch support into a durable operating model.

The right person is highly strategic and deeply practical. They can move from executive-level framing to detailed workflow design, stakeholder management, SOPs, launch readiness, risk tracking, and implementation. They are technically comfortable, AI-fluent, analytically strong, and able to coordinate effectively across Product, Engineering, Legal, Policy, Support, Partnerships, and Operations, including external stakeholders.

Location: San Francisco, CA; hybrid, 3 days/week in-office.

IN THIS ROLE, YOU WILL:

- Lead strategic operational builds from ambiguous problem statement to implemented operating model, including scope, owners, workflows, milestones, risks, and success measures.

- Build launch and early-life operating models for complex partner deployments, including monitoring cadence, escalation paths, ownership maps, reporting expectations, and follow-up mechanisms.

- Translate technical, policy, safety, privacy, and operational constraints into practical workflows that teams can execute.

- Define how safety and risk signals should be monitored, reviewed, packaged, escalated, and tracked through resolution.

- Partner with senior leaders a