---
title: 'Program Manager, Critical Harm Operations at OpenAI'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/program-manager-critical-harm-operations-openai-san-francisco-gd6n85t820zp'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-10'
---

# Program Manager, Critical Harm Operations at OpenAI

- **Company:** [OpenAI](https://feeny.ai/companies/openai)
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Compensation:** $252k–$280k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-08-03
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-10
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/6ab33f9d-f25f-4ae4-903f-ebc35a8dc29d

## Job description

## About the Team

Critical Harm Operations sits within User Safety & Risk Operations and builds enforcement systems for Frontier Risk and Material Harm that are accurate, fast, defensible, and built to scale. We turn policy intent into operational readiness, review standards, quality systems, escalation paths, automation guardrails, and durable cross-functional operating models.

## About the Role

We are looking for an exceptional Program Manager to help build durable operating systems and run some of OpenAI’s most complex safety operations. The core need is a high-agency operator who can take an ambiguous problem, create the right structure, align cross-functional partners, and drive the work through execution. This role will move across Critical Harm priorities as needs evolve. You may step into operationalizing national security or violent-activities workflows, support wellbeing and Frontier Risk initiatives, or help scale programs such as Trusted Access. Deep domain expertise is helpful but not required; the strongest candidates will learn quickly, exercise excellent judgment, and make complex programs move. In this role, you will:

- Lead strategic operational builds across priority workflows from problem statement to implemented operating model, including scope, owners, milestones, risks, success measures, and execution cadence.
- Translate policy, safety, technical, legal, and operational constraints into workflows, requirements, playbooks, escalation paths, and decision-making structures that teams can execute.
- Coordinate with User Ops leadership, Product Policy, Integrity, Safety Systems, i2, Legal, Product, Engineering, Support, vendors, and other partners to resolve dependencies and keep critical work moving.
- Move in and out of workflows as priorities shift—standing up new programs, stabilizing operations, improving handoffs, and transitioning durable ownership to the right team.
- Use operational data and frontline signals to identify bottlenecks, quality gaps, capacity needs, ownership failures, and the highest-leverage interventions.
- Drive high-priority escalations and cross-functional decisions to closure, ensuring the right context, accountable owners, clear next steps, and durable follow-up.
- Create the mechanisms that make programs run well: roadmaps, decision logs, status updates, risk registers, operating reviews, and crisp executive communication.
- Identify where AI tools, automation, lightweight systems, or simpler workflows can improve speed, consistency, and scale while preserving appropriate human judgment.

You might thrive in this role if you:

- Have 8+ years of experience in program management, strategy and operations, product operations, technical program management, trust and safety, support operations, risk operations, implementation, or a related field.
- Have a track record of taking complex, ambiguous work from problem framing through launch and scaled operation.
- Are unusually organized, sharp, and execution-focused; you can manage many moving pieces without losing the few decisions that matter most.
- Build trust and drive alignment across teams without direct authority, while keeping ownership, accountability, and escalation paths clear.
- Are technically and analytically fluent enough to reason about data flows, dashboards, tooling gaps, automation, and failure modes—even if you are not writing production code.
- Communicate clearly with technical, operational, policy, and executive audiences, especially when tradeoffs are sensitive or evidence is incomplete.
- Operate calmly and flexibly in a fast-moving environment, learn new domains quickly, and are comfortable handling high-severity or sensitive work.
- Experience with vendor operations, QA programs, launch readiness, workflow automation, or AI-assisted operations.

Nice to have:

- Experience in customer support or other high-stakes scaled operations.
- Deep expertise with national security, violence or other severe-harm domains.

## 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. [OpenAI Homepage](https://openai.com/)

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