Why This Job is Featured on The SaaS Jobs
This Head of Tax Policy and Strategic Projects role stands out in the SaaS landscape because it sits where digital product expansion meets cross border rulemaking. As AI and software services scale internationally, tax policy and trade considerations increasingly shape go to market choices, infrastructure footprints, and partnership structures. The listing signals a function designed to engage early with product and business decisions, not only to interpret regulations after the fact.
For a long term SaaS career, the work builds fluency in how recurring revenue businesses manage global complexity as they broaden distribution and enter new jurisdictions. It offers repeated exposure to high consequence decisions such as market entry, deal support, and structural planning, alongside the practical mechanics of translating evolving guidance into operational playbooks. That combination tends to travel well across SaaS companies that operate internationally or expect to.
The role is best suited to senior tax leaders who prefer operating at the intersection of policy, finance, legal, and product, and who are comfortable representing a company in external forums. It will fit someone who enjoys ambiguous problem spaces, can communicate technical positions to executives, and wants tax to be a strategic lever in a software driven business.
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 Finance is responsible for ensuring the organization is set up for success in pursuit of its mission.
OpenAI’s Tax and Trade team sits at the center of OpenAI’s global growth—shaping how cutting-edge AI products, partnerships, and infrastructure scale across borders while navigating complex tax, trade, and regulatory regimes. We operate as strategic operators, not just compliance experts, embedding early in product, finance, policy, and infrastructure decisions to manage risk, unlock incentives, and enable OpenAI to grow responsibly and competitively worldwide.
About the Role
As the Head of Tax Policy and Strategic Projects, you will act as a policy leader to guide our company’s global tax strategy and shape the future of taxation for AI and digital innovation. You will be directly involved in high-impact projects including deals, tax planning, controversy, and other strategic or operational initiatives, ensuring that tax policy is informed by and embedded in real-world business decisions.
You’re someone who can combine external policy leadership with deep internal collaboration and work closely with Finance, Legal, Product, and Policy teams to ensure that our global tax posture supports innovation, growth, and competitiveness. You will also bring strong global technical tax expertise, strategic business instincts, and the ability to communicate complex issues clearly to policymakers and senior executives alike.
This role is based in San Francisco, CA, but we are also open to Washington DC area-based candidates. 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:
Define and implement the company’s tax policy strategy to align with global business objectives and regulatory developments.
Translate emerging policy developments in the form of Regulations and Written Guidance (Rev. Procs. Rev. Rul. etc) into practical guidance and help shape the company's long-term tax strategy by connecting technical rules with real-world implementation.
Represent the company in discussions with policymakers (Congress, the Treasury Department), regulators, and multilateral institutions (e.g., OECD, G20, IMF) to help shape frameworks for the digital and AI economy, including Pillar 1, Pillar 2, and digital services taxes.
Partner with the Global Affairs and Legal groups as a technical tax resource.
Play an active role in cross-border tax planning and controversy matters, including support for licensing structures, operational expansions, and internal reorganizations.
Apply advanced technical expertise in areas such as FDDEI, NCTI, foreign tax credits, income characterization and sourcing, and the application of CAMT, BEAT, and NOL limitations. Advise on complex transactions and intercompany arrangements to ensure tax outcomes are sustainable, audit-ready, and aligned with commercial and policy objectives
Partner with Finance, Legal, Product, and Policy teams to integrate tax considerations into strategic initiatives such as new market entry, M&A, and global structuring.
You might thrive in this role if you have:
A J.D. and 15+ years of experience in global tax policy, planning, or strategy, with leadership experience in multinational corporations, government, or multilateral institutions.
Demonstrated experience in tax planning, transactional, or M&A tax matters, with the ability to connect business activity to long-term tax policy and strategy.
A deep understanding of OECD/G20 frameworks (Pillar 1 and Pillar 2), digital services taxation, tax regulatory review process and analysis of these regulations, U.S. global tax policy.
Prior experience working in a government tax policy or regulatory environment (e.g., U.S. Department of the Treasury, IRS, legislative tax policy roles) or in roles interfacing with government tax authorities preferred.
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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