Why This Job is Featured on The SaaS Jobs
This Product Policy role sits in a core SaaS control plane: defining and operationalising rules for how widely used AI services can be accessed and applied. In subscription software—especially API-led platforms—policy is not a side function; it shapes product boundaries, customer trust, and the practical “terms of use” that govern real deployments. The national security focus adds a distinctive layer of high-stakes governance where product decisions must hold up under scrutiny beyond typical commercial contexts.
From a SaaS career perspective, the work builds durable experience at the intersection of product, risk, and platform operations. It develops fluency in translating evolving technical capabilities into enforceable policies, and in creating decision frameworks that can be applied repeatedly as new use cases emerge. The cross-functional operating model—working with engineering, legal, investigations, and government-facing teams—mirrors how mature SaaS companies manage complex product surfaces at scale.
This position is best suited to professionals who prefer structured problem-solving and clear written reasoning, and who are comfortable handling sensitive, ambiguous requests without relying on precedent. It will particularly fit candidates motivated by governance as a product discipline, where impact comes from operational clarity, careful trade-offs, and consistent execution across stakeholders.
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 Product Policy team is responsible for the development, implementation, enforcement, and communication of the policies that govern use of OpenAI’s services, including ChatGPT, GPTs, the GPT store, Sora, and the OpenAI API. As a member of this team, you will be instrumental in developing policy approaches to best enable both innovative and responsible use of AI so that our groundbreaking technologies are truly used to benefit all people.
About the Role
As a member of the Product Policy team, you will work at the intersection of AI capabilities, national security use cases, and risk governance. You will contribute to the development and refinement of OpenAI’s national security usage policies, support operational decision-making on sensitive use cases, and partner closely with technical, legal, investigations, and OpenAI for Government teams to ensure responsible deployment of our systems in high-risk contexts.
This role will own significant parts of the core work, operating with autonomy while partnering closely with the manager for strategic direction and prioritization. Much of the foundational infrastructure for this work is already in place; we are seeking a strong executor with relevant domain expertise who can take ownership of this portfolio and drive it forward as the scope and complexity of national security engagement continues to grow.
This role is based in Washington, D.C. 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:
Contribute to the ongoing development, refinement, and communication of OpenAI’s approach to governing national security use of OpenAI technology.
Support operational reviews of high-risk use cases, including preparing clear, well-structured decision briefs for internal stakeholders on complex or sensitive matters.
Partner closely with cross-functional teams to design and support risk assessments, evaluations, and other mechanisms used to assess fitness-for-purpose of AI capabilities in national security contexts.
Drive national-security deployments through required safety, risk, and governance processes.
Collaborate with investigations and detection teams to define and operationalize principles for identifying, prioritizing, and responding to unauthorized or adversarial national-security use of OpenAI technology.
Engage directly with government stakeholders on AI safety and governance, helping both OpenAI and government partners understand emerging risks and responsible deployment.
You might thrive in this role if you:
Have 4+ years of experience working in national security, defense, intelligence, or adjacent high-risk policy environments, with demonstrated experience with advanced or emerging technologies (including AI-enabled systems).
Have experience developing and/or operationalizing risk assessments and policies in partnership with technical and legal teams.
Demonstrate the ability to drive alignment across diverse internal and external stakeholders, navigating substantive differences in perspective while balancing principled risk management with pragmatic decision-making.
Communicate and engage product managers, engineers, researchers, lawyers, and executives with clarity and credibility.
Demonstrate the ability to adapt quickly to new problem spaces and evolving priorities, learning unfamiliar domains as needed and contributing effectively across adjacent work streams as organizational needs shift.
You could be an especially great fit if you are:
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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