Why This Job is Featured on The SaaS Jobs
This role stands out in the SaaS landscape because it addresses a less visible but increasingly strategic lever for scaling: the physical footprint that supports product development and operations. For a company building and deploying software at global reach, leasing decisions become intertwined with capacity planning, security, and long-term flexibility, not just facilities management. The remit signals a mature stage of operational complexity, where portfolio choices can meaningfully influence execution across regions.
From a SaaS career perspective, the position offers exposure to how high-growth technology organizations translate business plans into durable operating infrastructure. The work naturally sits at the intersection of finance, legal, workplace operations, and executive decision making, building fluency in governance, scenario modeling, and risk management. Those skills travel well across SaaS companies that are expanding offices, entering new markets, or tightening operational discipline.
The role is best suited to a leader who prefers ambiguous, multi-stakeholder problems and can move between strategy and transaction detail without losing rigor. It will appeal to professionals who enjoy building repeatable frameworks and decision mechanisms, and who want a seat close to executive tradeoffs that shape how a SaaS organization scales in practice.
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
At OpenAI, our Real Estate & Workplace (REW) team builds and manages the environments that power our innovation. We create spaces that are efficient, scalable, and aligned with our mission — from strategic leasing decisions to the systems that keep our workplaces running smoothly. Joining this team means helping shape the environments where world-changing technology is built.
About the Role
We’re seeking a Director of Leasing & Strategy to lead high-impact initiatives and shape the strategic direction of OpenAI’s global real estate portfolio. This role will lead the real estate strategy and transactions team, oversee complex transactions, assess new opportunities, manage portfolio risk, and ensure leasing decisions align with OpenAI’s long-term business and growth objectives. The ideal candidate brings deep leasing expertise, strong financial acumen, and the ability to build scalable systems, operate effectively in ambiguity, and translate complex tradeoffs into clear executive decisions and durable outcomes.
This role is based in San Francisco, CA. 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 drive global real estate strategy balancing cost, flexibility, speed, and long-term growth.
Lead and develop a high-performing team while building strong cross-functional partnerships across regions.
Own end-to-end lease transactions (strategy → site selection → negotiation → execution) and secure best-in-class outcomes.
Act as a senior thought partner to executives, shaping high-stakes decisions with clear, data-driven recommendations.
Develop portfolio strategies, financial models, and scenario analyses to inform investment decisions and tradeoffs.
Build scalable frameworks, playbooks, and operating mechanisms that improve speed, quality, and consistency.
Drive company-wide real estate decisions aligned to broader business, talent, and infrastructure strategy.
Oversee portfolio governance (expirations, risk, obligations) and ensure proactive, disciplined execution.
Lead budgeting, forecasting, and reporting in partnership with Finance and Accounting, ensuring strong controls.
Drive alignment across Legal, Workplace, Finance, Security, EHS, and other stakeholders on transactions and operations.
Build analytics and reporting systems to improve visibility, prioritization, and portfolio performance.
Establish strong external partnerships (landlords, brokers, operators) and leverage AI/tools to enhance execution and outcomes.
You might thrive in this role if you have:
8–12+ years of experience leading corporate real estate transactions across commercial office and industrial/warehouse environments; in-house experience strongly preferred.
Advanced expertise in lease negotiation and interpretation, portfolio strategy, financial modeling, and risk assessment.
Proven ability to lead and develop high-performing teams in fast-paced environments, while producing clear, executive-ready recommendations and decision materials.
Strong communication and judgment, with the ability to navigate ambiguity, influence stakeholders, and independently solve complex problems.
Ability to balance long-term strategic planning with hands-on execution, moving seamlessly from portfolio strategy to detailed transaction and lease review.
Proficiency with AI-enabled tools, Google and Microsoft Suites, and lease administration 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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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.
