Compensation Programs & Operations Lead

OpenAI’s Compensation team helps attract, reward, and retain the people advancing our mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. We develop compensation strategies and programs that support a rapidly evolving business, combining market insight, sound judgment, and thoughtful execution. We partner across People, Finance, Legal, and the business to deliver programs that employees and leaders can understand and trust.

We’re looking for a Compensation Programs & Operations Lead to own the end-to-end program management of our cyclical and ad hoc compensation programs globally. You will turn compensation priorities into executable plans and lead delivery from initial scoping through launch, reconciliation, and continuous improvement.

This is a senior, hands-on role for a compensation subject-matter expert who is energized by operations and E2E program ownership. You should bring experience across compensation operations analysis, compensation analysis, business partnership, and program management. Having done this work yourself, you understand the practical details behind compensation decisions and what it takes to implement them accurately.

You will establish how our compensation programs run: the calendar, responsibilities, systems requirements, controls, communications, and handoffs that connect program design to the employee experience. You’ll partner closely with Compensation Partners, HR Business Partners, People Operations, People Technology, Finance, Payroll, Equity Administration, and Legal, creating clarity and driving execution as priorities evolve.

• Have 10+ years of progressive compensation experience, including substantial responsibility for global compensation programs and operations in a complex, fast-growing organization.

• Have performed the core responsibilities of a Compensation Operations Analyst, Compensation Analyst, Compensation Partner, and Compensation Program Manager, whether through separate roles or a combination of positions.

• Bring deep compensation expertise across base pay, incentives, equity, market benchmarking, salary structures, and job architecture, and understand how these elements translate into day-to-day administration.

• Have independently led complex compensation cycles and new initiatives, coordinating multiple teams from planning and analysis through implementation and reconciliation.

• Are deliberately drawn to an operations-focused role. You enjoy making programs work, improving the details, and building processes that others can rely on.

• Combine strong analytical skills with practical systems experience, including advanced spreadsheet modeling and hands-on work with Workday or comparable HR and compensation platforms.

• Can establish priorities and drive progress when requirements are incomplete or changing, while making thoughtful tradeoffs about speed, accuracy, and capacity.

• Communicate clearly with senior leaders and working teams, influence across functions, and make ownership and next steps explicit.

• Exercise sound judgment with confidential information and bring a high standard of accuracy, accountability, and service to your work.

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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