Why This Job is Featured on The SaaS Jobs
People systems work is increasingly strategic in SaaS companies as headcount scales across countries, policies, and entities. This role stands out because it centers on Workday Absence—an area where productized HR operations meets real-world regulatory variation—within a broader HR systems landscape that must stay reliable as the organization expands.
For a SaaS career, the most durable learning here is operating a core system as a platform: balancing configuration, security, reporting, and governance while translating policy intent into system behavior. Ownership of Absence also creates practical exposure to cross-module dependencies (Benefits, Payroll, Compensation), which is the kind of systems thinking that becomes valuable in larger SaaS orgs with complex data flows and audit expectations.
This position is best suited to someone who prefers structured problem-solving, careful change control, and stakeholder partnership over purely advisory work. It fits professionals who enjoy being the “system owner” accountable for day-to-day stability while also driving iterative improvements, and who are comfortable supporting end users through training, documentation, and operational troubleshooting.
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
OpenAI’s People team aims to hire, engage, and retain world-class talent who will safely build and deploy universally beneficial Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). The People Systems team is an important subset of the People Operations team and is responsible for designing, building, and optimizing our HR technology to support a rapidly growing employee population.
About the Role
We are excited to hire a proactive and detail-oriented People Systems Analyst who will be responsible for configuring, maintaining, and optimizing our core People system, Workday, and our broader HR systems landscape. The ideal candidate will possess strong analytical skills, excel in project management, and provide exceptional support and training to our users. We seek a collaborative team player who can drive process improvements and ensure compliance and security within our people systems.
This role is being hired to serve as the primary owner of Absence in Workday, including plan design, country-specific configuration, compliance alignment, and operational support as OpenAI continues to scale globally.
We are intentionally seeking candidates who pair deep Absence expertise with working knowledge across one or more adjacent domains — Benefits, Payroll, and/or Compensation — enabling tighter cross-module design, faster issue resolution, and stronger partnership with People Ops and Finance.
In this role, you will own:
Day-to-day management of our HR systems: Configuration, Security and Audits, Reports Management, Mass Data Requests, Tenant Management, Compliance.
Program Management: Governance / Change Control, Special Projects (e.g., M&As, country / entity expansions).
Optimization: Analytics & Dashboards, Enhancements and new capabilities, Improving end-user experience.
Change Management: Employee Training and Communications.
We’re looking for someone with:
Required (non-negotiable):
Deep, hands-on expertise in Workday Absence, including plan configuration, accruals, eligibility, country-specific rules, and ongoing operational support
Strongly preferred (one or more):
Benefits (plan configuration, vendor coordination, open enrollment support)
Payroll (downstream impacts, audits, reconciliation, compliance awareness)
Compensation (foundational understanding of plans, eligibility, and interactions with absence and payroll)
Experience supporting global growth, new country launches, or policy redesigns
Technical expertise in configuring and customizing Workday, including creating reports, dashboards, and simple integrations.
Project Management: Experience in managing HR technology-enabled projects and implementations.
Problem-Solving: Ability to troubleshoot and resolve issues related to HR systems configuration, security, and data integrity.
Communication Skills: Strong verbal and written communication skills to interact effectively with HR stakeholders, IT, Finance, and end-users.
Training and Support: Experience in providing training and support to end-users, including creating user guides and conducting training sessions.
HR technology familiarity: Experience managing or integrating with other HR or business systems.
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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