Program Manager, Partner Operations

OpenAI OpenAI · AI Frontier · San Francisco, CA · Research

This role supports the execution and improvement of operational workflows for external research partnerships at OpenAI. It involves managing processes, tracking deliverables, supporting partner requests, and optimizing team operations. The ideal candidate is highly organized, detail-oriented, and comfortable in a fast-paced environment with evolving requirements. While the role is within an AI research company and may interact with AI technologies, its core function is operational and program management, not direct AI/ML development.

What you'd actually do

  1. Support the execution of critical partner-facing operational workflows.
  2. Build and improve processes, tools, and automations that increase team efficiency and reduce operational friction.
  3. Manage day-to-day execution against partner commitments with strong attention to detail.
  4. Deep dive into the critical drivers of operations and identifying opportunities for optimization and innovation.
  5. Manage critical inquiries from both technical and non-technical partners.

Skills

Required

  • Experience in strategy & operations, program management, consulting, investment banking, or a similar execution-focused role.
  • Strong technical fluency, and are comfortable working closely with research and engineering teams.
  • Fantastic at building cross-functional relationships and having empathy for the many roles involved in deploying research.
  • Great communicator across written, presentation, and visual forms.
  • Engaged and curious about the rapidly evolving AI landscape.

Nice to have

  • Experience with vibe coding tools, agentic models or OpenAI LLM APIs: e.g., Codex.
  • Project management tools: e.g., Jira.

What the JD emphasized

  • partner-facing operational workflows
  • processes, tools, and automations
  • partner commitments
  • optimization and innovation
  • technical and non-technical partners
  • engineering background or strong technical fluency
  • building cross-functional relationships
  • communicator across written, presentation, and visual forms
  • engaged and curious about the rapidly evolving AI landscape
  • agentic models or OpenAI LLM APIs