Corporate Business Development Lead

About the Role
We are a small, fast-moving partnerships team that shapes and executes OpenAI’s most strategic collaborations. In this role, you will lead initiatives spanning everything from strategic deals to enabling new ecosystem launches in consumer and enterprise software as well as hardware. You will build deep relationships, set and ensure we have the right joint strategy and programs in place, lead cross-functional workstreams, and iterate on complex deals to break new ground and advance OpenAI’s mission.

You are a seasoned leader with deep experience in architecting complex deals across all aspects of the business, comfortable operating amid ambiguity, and capable of driving alignment at the executive level while simultaneously pushing critical programs to delivery. You have a background in both software and hardware industries and prior experience scaling new platforms and ecosystems.

Key Responsibilities:

• Own the partner relationship end-to-end. Be the primary point of contact internally and externally for OpenAI’s most important strategic partners.

• Define and drive joint strategy and roadmap alignment. Collaborate with product, engineering, finance, sales, legal to translate product and engineering priorities into partner roadmaps, milestones, and decision points.

• Technical diligence and partner strategy. Evaluate build/buy/partner options, understand where advantages/risks sit, and provide clear recommendations grounded in technical and business analysis (user experience, data sets, cost targets, silicon device HW/SW stack, timelines etc.).

• Structure and negotiate complex agreements. Lead negotiations with the partner, owning the lifecycle from initial deal structure through launch, expansion and renewal.

• Run operating rhythm and governance. Establish and lead QBRs, steering committees, and exec briefings. Unblock issues fast and hold both sides accountable to outcomes.

• Measure and communicate impact. Own the KPI framework and reporting: launch milestones, partner adoption, revenue or usage impact, ecosystem growth, strategic leverage, and partner health.

• Build trusted, long-term relationships with partner executives; influence roadmaps, investment decisions, and capacity allocation.

Qualifications:

• 12+ years of experience in business development, strategic partnerships, or general management of marketplaces/ecosystems. Commercial leadership within semiconductors, consumer electronics, cloud infrastructure, or marketplaces preferred.

• Demonstrated success across the lifecycle of complex strategic partnerships that combine product integration, commercial terms, GTM execution, and long-term platform alignment.

• Strong technical fluency and cross-functional leadership across product, engineering, GTM, legal, policy, security, support, and operations, particularly where execution depends on influence.

• Clear communication, structured thinking, and comfort making prioritization calls in a fast-moving and ambiguous environment.

• Exceptionally high quality judgment and integrity.

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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