--- title: 'Lead Counsel, Commercial (Energy - Infrastructure) at OpenAI' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/lead-counsel-commercial-energy-infrastructure-openai-san-francisco-kakj27v18yby' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-11-05' --- # Lead Counsel, Commercial (Energy - Infrastructure) at OpenAI - **Company:** [OpenAI](https://feeny.ai/companies/openai) - **Location:** San Francisco, CA - **Compensation:** $330k–$423k - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** hybrid - **Posted:** 2026-10-30 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-05 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/687d42ab-42dd-4ab7-9675-2468896746e9 ## Job description ## About the Team OpenAI’s Legal team plays a crucial role in advancing our mission by tackling innovative and fundamental legal issues in AI. The team includes professionals from diverse legal fields—technology, AI, infrastructure, privacy, IP, corporate, employment, tax, regulatory, and litigation—who collaborate closely with colleagues across the company. If you are passionate about being an energy and infrastructure lawyer working on cutting-edge challenges, you’ll thrive here. ## About the Role We’re seeking an experienced energy lawyer to support the business on legal matters relating to the energy and power infrastructure supporting OpenAI’s fast-growing data center portfolio. This is a cross-functional role that will partner closely with energy, infrastructure development, engineering, procurement, and finance teams to advise on complex legal and regulatory issues and help structure, negotiate, and manage the transactions that secure reliable, cost-effective power for OpenAI’s long-term infrastructure ambitions. We’re looking for an experienced energy and infrastructure lawyer who thrives in ambiguity and wants to help define the commercial playbook for power procurement and energy project development in the AI era. This role reports to the Associate General Counsel for Infrastructure. The role’s scope and level will reflect the successful candidate’s experience and expertise. In this role, you will: - Own legal strategy and risk management for OpenAI’s global energy procurement and power infrastructure transactions, from initial structuring through execution and ongoing implementation. - Draft, negotiate, and advise on complex power purchase agreements, energy supply and hedging arrangements, and utility service and special contracts, including related regulatory requirements and approvals. - Structure and negotiate interconnection, transmission, and utility infrastructure arrangements that align power availability with data center development and operating schedules. - Advise leadership and business leaders on legal and regulatory considerations as they develop and implement our energy and data center strategy - Support strategic partnerships involving renewable and other carbon-free generation, energy storage, and on-site or behind-the-meter power solutions for AI infrastructure. - Develop legal and regulatory frameworks for energy procurement, project development, and collaboration with utilities, independent power producers, and energy developers. - Partner with finance and operations teams to align contract terms with business and compliance requirements, including pricing, delivery and curtailment risk, credit support, and project milestones. - Collaborate with policy and regulatory colleagues on issues impacting energy transactions, utility tariffs, grid access, market participation, retail service requirements, and renewable energy attributes. - Build scalable, efficient contracting processes that support OpenAI’s energy and infrastructure development at speed while managing legal and regulatory risk. - Guide outside counsel and coordinate with real estate, construction, tax, and regulatory counsel on energy transactions and project development. You might thrive in this role if you: - 10+ years of legal experience, with substantial focus on complex commercial energy transactions. - Have a JD and license or qualification to practice in CA. - Relevant experience in-house, at a law firm, or a combination of both, advising energy companies, utilities, developers, major power customers, or infrastructure investors. - Demonstrated experience independently leading complex energy transactions, including power purchase, utility service, or interconnection agreements. - Familiarity with U.S. electricity markets, utility tariffs, and the regulatory frameworks affecting energy supply, interconnection, and transmission, including FERC, state utility commissions, and regional grid operators. - Strong commercial judgment and financial fluency in energy pricing, volume commitments, credit support, and allocation of development and operating risk. - Demonstrated ability to operate with autonomy and sound judgment in highly technical and fast-moving environments. - Exceptional communication skills, with an ability to distill complexity into actionable, business-aligned guidance and advise senior business leaders on strategic decisions. - Experience advising on cross-border energy deals and international energy regulatory frameworks is a plus. - Prior experience with data center power procurement, generation or storage development, energy project finance, joint ventures, or on-site and behind-the-meter energy projects is a strong plus. ## 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](https://cdn.openai.com/policies/eeo-policy-statement.pdf). 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. To notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant, please submit a report through [this form](https://form.asana.com/?d=57018692298241&k=5MqR40fZd7jlxVUh5J-UeA). No response will be provided to inquiries unrelated to job posting compliance. We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this [link](https://form.asana.com/?k=bQ7w9h3iexRlicUdWRiwvg&d=57018692298241). [OpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy](https://cdn.openai.com/policies/global-employee-and-contractor-privacy-policy.pdf) 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. ## About OpenAI ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company with a mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits all of humanity. - **Entity Type**: Private – structured as a nonprofit parent (OpenAI Foundation) governing a for-profit public benefit corporation (OpenAI Group). The company has confidentially submitted a draft S-1 registration statement to the SEC, signaling a potential future IPO. - **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, USA - **Founded**: 2015 - **Founders**: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, John Schulman, Wojciech Zaremba, and others ## Core Business - **Primary industry**: Artificial intelligence research and deployment - **Target customers**: B2B (enterprises via API and platform), B2C (ChatGPT users), and developers (API, open-source models) - **Mission**: To ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) – AI systems that are generally smarter than humans – benefits all of humanity. ## Products & Services - **[ChatGPT](https://openai.com/chatgpt)**: Conversational AI assistant available via web and mobile, used by consumers and integrated into enterprise workflows. - **[GPT-4 API](https://openai.com/product)**: Large language model accessed via API for developers to build AI-powered applications (text generation, summarization, code assistance, etc.). - **[DALL-E](https://openai.com/dall-e-3)**: Image generation model that creates images from natural language descriptions. - **[Whisper](https://openai.com/research/whisper)**: Open-source speech recognition system. - **[OpenAI Agents](https://openai.com/)**: Emerging product category focused on autonomous AI agents that can perform tasks on behalf of users (announced June 2026). ## Market Standing - **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed in the provided sources. Widely reported in the press at ~$300 billion as of early 2026 (post-funding round), but this figure is not confirmed by OpenAI’s official materials. - **Key Metric**: Total funding exceeds $13 billion from Microsoft and other investors. The company has also confidentially filed a draft S-1 with the SEC (see [openai.com](https://openai.com/) – “Confidential submission of draft S-1”). - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Microsoft (strategic partner and largest investor), with additional participation from Thrive Capital, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and others. - **Growth Signals**: Active hiring with 721 open roles posted; expansion into agent-based products; confidential IPO filing; continued deployment of frontier models. ## Competitive Advantages - **First-mover & brand recognition**: ChatGPT became the fastest-growing consumer app in history, establishing OpenAI as the household name in generative AI. - **Research leadership**: Consistently publishes cutting-edge research (GPT-4, DALL-E 3, Whisper, etc.) and attracts top AI talent. - **Compute & infrastructure**: Exclusive partnership with Microsoft provides massive cloud computing resources (Azure) for training and inference. - **Unique governance structure**: The nonprofit parent ensures mission alignment (AGI benefiting humanity) while the for-profit arm can raise capital and scale products. ## Strategic Focus - **Safe AGI development**: Continued emphasis on safety research, alignment, and responsible deployment (e.g., safety systems, model provenance). - **Enterprise expansion**: Growing ChatGPT Enterprise and API offerings for businesses. - **Agentic AI**: Building autonomous agents that can “transform work” (announced June 2026). - **IPO preparation**: Confidential S-1 filing indicates intent to go public, which will require increased financial transparency and governance maturity. ## Why Work Here - **Culture & values**: OpenAI’s stated values include “Humanity first,” “Act with humility,” “Feel the AGI,” and “Ship joy.” Operating principles emphasize agency, creativity, rapid iteration, and intense focus. - **Benefits**: Competitive health insurance, mental healthcare support, 24-week paid birth-parent leave (plus 20 weeks for other parents), generous PTO, annual learning & development stipend, daily meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner), and a domestic conference budget. - **Work environment**: Hybrid/office-based (San Francisco headquarters). The company offers a residency program for researchers and engineers transitioning into AI. - **Impact**: Employees work directly on frontier AI models that shape the industry and society. The mission-driven nature attracts talent passionate about AGI’s societal implications. ## Sources 1. [OpenAI About Page](https://openai.com/about/) 2. [OpenAI Careers Page](https://openai.com/careers/) 3. [OpenAI Job Search](https://openai.com/careers/search) 4. 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