Head of Strategic Sourcing - Services

About the Team

OpenAI Finance ensures the organization is positioned for long-term success as we pursue our mission. The Strategic Sourcing & Procurement function plays a critical role in enabling OpenAI to deliver impact across research, product development, technology infrastructure, and services by helping the company scale responsibly, securely, and with strong commercial discipline.

Our work sits at the intersection of innovation and execution. We partner closely with teams across OpenAI to translate rapidly evolving business needs into scalable, compliant, and economically sound external partnerships.

As OpenAI continues to grow at pace, services sourcing is becoming increasingly strategic across the company. Every business unit relies on external service providers in different ways — to extend capacity, access specialized expertise, support operations, and accelerate execution. Done well, Procurement becomes a source of trust and momentum, helping OpenAI move faster with the right partners, stronger commercial outcomes, and the right level of protection.

About the Role

We are seeking a leader to define and drive sourcing strategy across a broad portfolio of services categories at OpenAI. This role will shape how OpenAI sources professional services across the company, guide key decisions on supplier strategy and commercial models, and build the capabilities needed to scale this domain over time.

This is a highly strategic leadership role with broad cross-functional scope and significant visibility. You will partner with senior leaders across Finance, Legal, Security, People, GTM, Research, Engineering, Real Estate & Workplace, and other functions to define category strategies, guide complex commercial decisions, and build scalable ways of working that improve speed, clarity, and value.

This role requires experience building and scaling sourcing in fast-moving environments — from establishing foundational capabilities and team structure to leading complex, high-spend, high-volume portfolios.

You will lead and be accountable for a growing team responsible for managing complex, high-stakes services engagements end-to-end, while evolving the sourcing model, supplier governance, and commercial approach needed to support OpenAI’s growth. This role reports into the Vice President of Procurement.

This role is based in San Francisco, CA. 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:

• Lead sourcing strategy across a broad services portfolio that supports teams across OpenAI.

• Partner across every business unit to shape sourcing strategies for professional services, ensuring teams can access the capabilities they need with the right balance of speed, value, and governance.

• Serve as a trusted advisor to senior and executive leadership on services strategy, supplier ecosystems, commercial tradeoffs, and risk.

• Define category strategies, supplier segmentation approaches, negotiation playbooks, and commercial frameworks that improve speed, consistency, and leverage.

• Engage early on high-impact services decisions to shape supplier selection, deal structures, and commercial outcomes in the areas that matter most to OpenAI’s speed, resilience, and stewardship.

• Guide high-stakes sourcing decisions across a diverse set of services categories, including areas such as Real Estate and Workplace services.

• Build supplier strategies that drive value beyond cost, including speed, service quality, resilience, flexibility, and access to critical capabilities.

• Leverage market insight and supplier intelligence to inform strategy, strengthen negotiations, and improve business outcomes.

• Independently prioritize and lead multiple highly complex workstreams across a fast-evolving services landscape.

• Build scalable sourcing models, governance mechanisms, and automation-enabled ways of working that improve decision quality and increase leverage across the team.

• Establish supplier KPIs, scorecards, and business review mechanisms across critical service providers.

• Build visibility into pipeline, cycle times, supplier performance, commercial outcomes, and category risks so leaders can make faster, better-informed decisions and drive stronger execution across the portfolio.

• Be accountable for team performance, operating outcomes, talent development, and management excellence across a high-performing team of experienced sourcing professionals.

• Set direction, establish priorities, and strengthen the capabilities, leadership, and organizational capacity needed to scale services sourcing over time.

You might thrive in this role if you have:

• 12+ years of experience in strategic sourcing, procurement, vendor management, or commercial leadership, with significant depth across services categories.

• Proven success leading high-stakes sourcing initiatives with enterprise-wide visibility across business units or critical categories.

• A track record of defining long-term supplier strategies and partnerships that drive value beyond cost — through innovation, speed, resilience, and capability growth.

• Strong experience guiding complex commercial decisions across a wide range of professional and operational services.

• Excellent executive presence and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to influence senior leaders, align cross-functional partners, and navigate complex tradeoffs with sound judgment.

• Experience designing scalable sourcing models, frameworks, and tools that reduce complexity and improve outcomes.

• Strong judgment in ambiguity and the ability to independently define, prioritize, and lead multiple highly complex workstreams.

• Demonstrated people leadership, including leading experienced teams, developing talent, and balancing near-term execution with long-term capability building.

• Experience building trusted cross-functional relationships and operating effectively in fast-moving, high-growth, high-ambiguity environments.

About 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.

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