Director People Operations Jobs in California (NOW HIRING)

About the Team
OpenAI's People team is committed to hiring, engaging, and supporting world-class talent to help safely build and deploy universally beneficial Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
The People Operations team is responsible for the systems, data, and operational rigor that underpin every stage of the employee lifecycle. Our work sits at the intersection of employee experience, regulatory compliance, and business velocity - ensuring that as OpenAI scales rapidly and globally, our foundations remain accurate, auditable, and human-centered.
This is a high-trust, high-impact function. We partner closely with Finance, Legal, IT, Security, and the broader People team to support growth in a dynamic environment with significant internal and external scrutiny. Operational excellence here is not about process for process's sake - it is about building durable infrastructure that enables fairness, transparency, and responsible scale.
About the Role
As Director of People Operations, you will own the core operational infrastructure that enables OpenAI to scale responsibly. This role serves as the operational backbone of the People function, with accountability for data integrity, operational controls, and audit readiness across the systems that support a complex, global workforce, including the operational foundations of recruiting and hiring at scale.
You will lead a team responsible for the end-to-end workforce lifecycle, from candidate and hiring operations through onboarding and offboarding, ensuring our people systems, processes, and data are accurate, resilient, and built to scale.In close partnership with Employment Legal and the People Compliance team, you will translate policy and regulatory requirements into scalable, well-controlled operational processes. This role operates with high visibility and close partnership with senior leaders across Finance, Legal, IT, and People, including ownership of SOX-relevant controls and workforce data relied upon by executive leadership, auditors, and the Board.
Success in this role requires exceptional judgment, comfort operating in ambiguity, and the ability to balance rigor with empathy at scale. This is not a steady-state operations role - it is a build-and-scale role in a fast-moving, high-stakes environment.
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:

• Own and continuously improve People Operations across the full workforce lifecycle, from candidate and hiring operations through onboarding and offboarding, ensuring scalable, compliant, and people-centered processes globally.
• Lead and develop a high-performing operations team across people and recruiting operations, setting clear standards, driving accountability, and building strong operational judgment.
• Own the integrity of workforce data end-to-end, from candidate and hiring data through employee lifecycle data, proactively identifying gaps, risks, and failure points before they impact compliance, reporting, or trust.
• Design, document, and rigorously test critical People and hiring processes and internal controls, with a strong focus on auditability, SOX-relevant controls where applicable, and long-term scalability.
• Serve as a senior operational partner to Finance, Legal, IT, Security, and People leadership, translating business needs into durable infrastructure that supports both hiring velocity and responsible workforce scale.
• Oversee People systems and vendors that support hiring and the employee lifecycle (e.g., ATS, HRIS, onboarding, payroll, benefits administration), ensuring reliability, clean handoffs, and strong user experience.
• Lead operational readiness for growth events such as headcount expansion, new entities, new geographies, workforce changes, and evolving regulatory requirements, ensuring hiring and people processes stay aligned and well-controlled.
• Establish clear operating rhythms, metrics, and reporting to surface risks, trends, and opportunities across hiring and workforce operations early.
• Act as a steady, trusted leader during moments of operational stress, change, or ambiguity, balancing rigor with empathy and speed.

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Have 12+ years of experience in People Operations or related functions, including leadership of complex, global teams.
• Deep experience designing and operating scalable People processes and systems in high-growth environments.
• Experience partnering closely with Recruiting or owning Recruiting Operations in a high-growth environment is a strong plus.
• Strong understanding of HR operational controls, audit readiness, and compliance-adjacent requirements, with demonstrated experience partnering closely with People Compliance and Legal; SOX experience strongly preferred.
• Proven ability to partner cross-functionally with Finance, Legal, IT, and Security on high-stakes initiatives.
• Track record of building teams, setting high standards, and developing strong operators.
• Excellent judgment, attention to detail, and ability to manage competing priorities without losing sight of the bigger picture.

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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