Why This Job is Featured on The SaaS Jobs
### Why this Role is Featured on The SaaS Jobs
Program management roles that sit inside data and operations have become increasingly central in SaaS adjacent AI companies, where product capability is constrained as much by data supply and governance as by model architecture. This position focuses on turning research roadmaps into dependable acquisition programs, a kind of operational leverage that underpins many modern software platforms using AI at scale.
For a SaaS career, the long-term value is the combination of systems thinking and execution discipline. Leading end to end workflows, vendor and partner engagements, and performance metrics builds fluency in how platform teams industrialise inputs, manage quality, and create repeatable processes. The work also develops a practical toolkit for cross functional alignment, translating technical requirements into operational plans, and making tradeoffs visible to leadership, all highly portable across SaaS organisations.
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 Foundations Data and Operations team is responsible for acquiring the data OpenAI needs to build frontier AI models. We run high-impact data acquisition programs, such as our web crawler and our data partnerships, and work closely with research to build the training datasets for our models. Our work advances the intelligence of our models and teaches them new skills that hundreds of millions of people benefit from every day.
About the Role
We are hiring a Program Manager to join our team. In this role, you will lead programs to acquire training data to advance our research roadmap. You will work with researchers to define requirements, design and manage acquisition workflows, and establish processes to execute them at scale.
This role requires a blend of strategic thinking and hands-on execution. The ideal candidate can navigate ambiguity, break down complex problems, manage cross-functional stakeholders, and drive alignment across technical and business teams. This role may require living close to some physical operations across the US and some hybrid travel to San Francisco.
In this role, you will:
Work closely with research to understand data needs and define acquisition priorities and timeline that are aligned with our research roadmap.
Translate research objectives into clear technical requirements and operational plans, ensuring data workflows, timelines, and quality standards are executed to the highest quality standards.
Lead vendor and partner engagements for data sourcing – including evaluating suppliers, negotiating agreements, and managing delivery.
Establish and maintain metrics for data quality, throughput, efficiency, and overall program performance, ensuring visibility to leadership and cross-functional partners.
Identify gaps in our data ecosystem and proactively drive initiatives to strengthen our data acquisition and creation capabilities over time.
You might thrive in this role if you:
Have 8+ years of experience in operations, strategy, venture capital, private equity, or consulting, with at least 5 years operating within a company. We will also consider high-trajectory candidates with fewer years of experience but at top companies with a clear track record of excellence.
Have experience taking end-to-end ownership of large, ambiguous problems, and breaking them down into clear, actionable plans.
Have direct experience engaging with executives and senior leaders to influence and drive strategic decisions.
Excel under pressure, bringing a high motor and exceptional adaptability and flexibility in a fast-paced, dynamic environment.
Are highly analytical - sophisticated in your understanding and approach to analyses; ability to ask and answer the most important questions, and present results clearly to leaders to influence decision making.
Are comfortable operating at all altitudes – discussing strategy and vision with executives, and troubleshooting operations with individual contributors and external partners.
Have excellent communication and cross-functional collaboration skills.
Are passionate about technology and artificial intelligence, and interested in its impact on business and society.
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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