Why This Job is Featured on The SaaS Jobs
Recruiting programs roles are often overlooked in SaaS career paths, yet they sit close to a company’s ability to scale. This position is notable because it treats candidate experience as a measurable funnel, using events as a structured channel for talent acquisition rather than one-off brand moments. The remit spans multiple event formats and offices, signalling a mature approach to pipeline-building where operational rigor and narrative coherence matter.
For SaaS professionals, the durable value here is learning how to design repeatable systems: defining a “north star,” aligning stakeholders, and translating business hiring priorities into programs with clear success metrics. The work naturally builds fluency in cross-functional operating models—partnering with recruiting leadership while coordinating with events, workplace, comms, and procurement—and strengthens the habit of tying qualitative feedback to conversion outcomes.
This role fits program managers who prefer owning frameworks and strategy while influencing execution through partners, rather than running every logistical detail. It also suits operators who enjoy balancing creative experience design with KPI discipline, and who are comfortable working on-site in a hub where leadership alignment, rapid iteration, and high candidate expectations are part of the day-to-day.
The section above is editorial commentary from The SaaS Jobs, provided to help SaaS professionals understand the role in a broader industry context.
Job Description
About the Team
The Recruiting Programs team powers OpenAI’s top-of-funnel hiring engine. We design and deliver strategic, high-impact experiences and programs that attract top-tier talent to our mission. From intimate dinners that build deep connections to large-scale conferences that amplify our brand, we curate events that spark curiosity, showcase our work, and strengthen our reputation as the place where the world’s best builders come to do their life’s work. Our mission is to elevate OpenAI’s presence, engage exceptional candidates, and create pathways that bring world-class talent into the company.
About the Role
We are seeking an experienced and highly organized Recruiting Events Program Manager to build this function from the ground up and shape how top talent experiences OpenAI. This person will be a crucial member of the Recruiting Programs team, strategizing high-impact events at scale across our offices while setting the bar for what world-class candidate engagement looks and feels like.
As a Recruiting Events Program Manager, you are detail-obsessed, resourceful, and thrive in an extremely fast-paced environment. You’re an exceptional communicator with an operational mindset—able to execute flawlessly while thinking strategically about how events ladder up to broader hiring goals.
In this role, you will partner closely with Recruiting leadership and the Global Events team to develop a top-of-funnel strategy, determining which events, channels, and experiences most effectively attract top-tier talent and how to sustain momentum in key communities. You’ll measure progress, analyze hiring trends, and capture candidate sentiment and feedback through the experiences you build.
You’ll collaborate cross-functionally with teams such as Events, Design, Procurement, Communications, Workplace, and Marketing, as well as critical support partners including catering, AV, facilities, and corporate security. You are comfortable navigating a wide range of operational tools (Jira, Google Workspace, Notion, Airtable)
This role partners closely with the Global Events team to define the strategic vision, look, and feel of select recruiting programs, ensuring alignment with OpenAI’s business and hiring priorities. You will set a clear north star for each experience — shaping goals, audience, content, executive presence, and success metrics — and translate recruiting needs into thoughtful, high-impact event concepts.
While the Events team owns large-scale production and logistics, you will lead strategy and lighter-touch planning for smaller initiatives like intimate dinners, panels, and community moments. This is a strategy and program leadership role — not an events operations role — requiring strong collaboration, comfort influencing without owning every detail, and the ability to guide execution through clear vision, alignment, and partnership.
This role is based onsite in San Francisco, CA and requires being in-office up to 5 days per week, with occasional evening work as needed.
In this role you will:
Build out the recruiting strategy for events across all recruiting pipelines in partnership with Recruiting leaders.
Be the owner of our recruiting brand and voice.
Work with the Events team to deploy the frameworks and guidance that enable recruiters to self-service and successfully execute small events.
Develop authentic and compelling recruiting programs content, run of shows, panel discussions, and product showcases that show off the best of OpenAI.
Manage global program budget and optimal markets and timelines for events.
Develop event success tracking through participant feedback and other relevant metrics, making data-driven recommendations for future improvements.
Own conversion KPIs with recruiting leaders to ensure event outcomes are successful.
You might thrive in this role if have:
6+ years of program management experience or, ideally in a recruiting/employee experience team
Strong organizational and project management skills, with a proven ability to juggle multiple projects simultaneously.
You step up with full ownership, act decisively, and bring a strong, directional vision while working collaboratively and with an open-mind
Proactive self-starter with experience working in face-paced, high growth companies.
Can roll up your sleeves and get things done but also be able to plan for the future as our program continues to scale.
Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, capable of working effectively with team members and leaders at all levels.
Creative thinker with a keen eye for detail and a commitment to delivering high-quality, memorable events.
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.
To notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant, please submit a report through this form. No response will be provided to inquiries unrelated to job posting compliance.
We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link.
OpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy
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.
