Strategic Sourcing Lead, Professional Services – Human Data

ABOUT THE TEAM

OpenAI Finance helps ensure the organization is positioned for long-term success as we pursue our mission. The Strategic Sourcing & Procurement team enables OpenAI to scale responsibly, securely, and at speed by helping teams choose the right external partners, structure strong commercial agreements, and build resilient supplier ecosystems. We work at the intersection of innovation and execution, partnering closely with leaders across the company to turn rapidly evolving needs into scalable, compliant, and economically sound solutions.

Professional services are a critical source of specialized expertise, capacity, and operational leverage across OpenAI. Our work spans consulting and advisory services, finance and accounting, legal, people and talent, managed services, Human Data services, and other enterprise capabilities. Done well, sourcing becomes a source of trust and momentum—helping teams move faster with the right partners, clearer outcomes, stronger economics, and appropriate safeguards.

ABOUT THE ROLE

We are seeking a Strategic Sourcing Lead to own and execute OpenAI’s category strategy for Professional Services. This is an experienced individual-contributor role for a high-velocity, hands-on sourcing operator who can set category priorities, own complex work end to end, exercise sound judgment, influence senior stakeholders, and build scalable category mechanisms in a rapidly growing organization. You will turn incomplete information, shifting priorities, and unclear decision paths into practical next steps and disciplined execution.

You will manage a broad portfolio of services engagements—from strategic advisory relationships and enterprise programs to high-volume statements of work. Partnering directly with leaders across Finance, Accounting, Legal, People, Extended Workforce, and business teams, you will set category priorities and translate needs into clear sourcing strategies, executable engagement models, and measurable outcomes. You will operate independently across multiple concurrent deals, knowing when to align, escalate, or redirect an approach to protect speed, value, and risk.

This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We use a hybrid work model of three days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.

IN THIS ROLE, YOU WILL:

- Own and continuously evolve the Professional Services category strategy and execution roadmap, setting priorities based on business needs, operating goals, market insight, and risk considerations.

- Own multiple complex sourcing workstreams end to end, balancing high-value strategic negotiations with a high-throughput portfolio of services engagements.

- Build trusted partnerships with senior stakeholders, clarify tradeoffs, and challenge or redirect proposed services models when a different approach will improve value, delivery, or risk.

- Lead complex negotiations and design fit-for-purpose commercial structures, including master services agreements, statements of work, milestone- and outcome-based pricing, rate cards, acceptance criteria, change controls, audit rights, and termination protections.

- Build and improve scalable category mechanisms, including intake and tiering, category plans, preferred-partner models, supplier segmentation, negotiation playbooks, approval pathways, and clear escalation mechanisms—creating enough structure to enable speed without over-engineering.

- Strengthen the supplier ecosystem through competitive sourcing, consolidation where appropriate, performance governance, business reviews, and active value-realization plans.

- Partner with Finance and Accounting to improve spend visibility, forecasting, approval discipline, invoice-to-contract alignment, and commercial structures that support appropriate accounting treatment and auditability.

- Partner with Legal, People, and Extended Workforce to distinguish professional services from contingent labor, translate guidance into practical guardrails, and reduce co-employment, scope, intellectual-property, and delivery risk without slowing the business.

- Produce clear, executive-ready reporting across pipeline health, savings and cost avoidance, cycle time, supplier performance, renewal exposure, risk, forecast accuracy, and realized business value.

- Drive reliable execution through disciplined follow-through, clear documentation, clean data, timely approvals, and practical process improvements—creating lightweight structure where gaps exist and adapting quickly as priorities change.

- Use AI to redesign sourcing workflows—including intake, market and supplier analysis, negotiation preparation, contract and spend analysis, documentation, reporting, and decision support—to improve speed, consistency, and decision quality while maintaining appropriate human judgment and controls.

YOU MIGHT THRIVE IN THIS ROLE IF YOU:

- Have 8+ years of progressive experience in strategic sourcing, procurement, or category management, with significant depth in Professional Services.

- Have owned Professional Services category strategy and sourcing end to end—from intake and competitive sourcing through contracting, governance, renewals, and long-term supplier strategy.

- Have led complex, high-stakes services negotiations and can balance cost, speed, flexibility, quality, risk, and long-term partnership value.

- Understand the commercial and operating dynamics of consulting, advisory, managed services, and project-based work, including the boundaries between professional services, contingent labor, and full-time hiring.

- Have helped build or improve category operating mechanisms—such as intake, tiering, preferred-partner models, playbooks, reporting, or supplier governance—and can balance standardization with flexibility.

- Have demonstrated experience using AI to redesign sourcing workflows and can show how it improved speed, insight, decision quality, or stakeholder experience while preserving appropriate human review and controls.

- Influence senior stakeholders through trust, structured thinking, sound judgment, and clear communication of tradeoffs; know when to move independently and when to align or escalate.

- Bring strong financial and analytical fluency, and can turn imperfect spend, supplier, and performance data into clear decisions and measurable business outcomes.

- Operate effectively through ambiguity, rapid change, and limited structure; turn incomplete data and evolving decision rights into clear actions, and adjust your approach to different company stages, operating models, and organizational cultures.

- Are a scrappy, hands-on operator who combines ownership, accountability, humility, and team-first collaboration; you are willing to do the work now and have the range to help shape and lead a flexible team over time.

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 https://cdn.openai.com/policies/eeo-policy-statement.pdf.

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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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.