--- title: 'Program Manager, Strategic Futures at OpenAI' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/program-manager-strategic-futures-openai-san-francisco-tqa6h610rxsp' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-09-10' --- # Program Manager, Strategic Futures at OpenAI - **Company:** [OpenAI](https://feeny.ai/companies/openai) - **Location:** San Francisco, CA - **Compensation:** $250k–$280k - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** hybrid - **Posted:** 2026-09-08 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-10 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/8f9693d9-73c8-48c1-b1cf-b0cd92a1c3c2 ## Job description ## About the Team The Strategic Futures team is a small, research- and writing-focused group exploring how advanced AI could reshape public policy, institutions, and society over the long term. We operate like an internal think tank: developing clear views of desirable long-range outcomes, examining the choices that could make those outcomes more likely, and producing ideas that help OpenAI and the broader public navigate profound technological change. The team is intentionally lean and highly collaborative. Our work draws from public policy, law, economics, political science, history, institutional design, technology, and other relevant disciplines. We partner closely with experts across OpenAI to connect long-range thinking with evolving AI capabilities, organizational priorities, and real-world policy questions. ## About the Role We are looking for a highly organized and strategic operator to serve as Chief of Staff and Program Manager for the Strategic Futures team. Working closely with the team’s leader, you will translate broad priorities into coordinated execution, establish the systems and operating rhythms that keep a small team performing at a high level, and ensure important work moves forward with clarity and consistency. This is a hands-on role combining chief-of-staff partnership, program management, strategic planning, cross-functional coordination, and communications. You will make it easier for the team to focus on high-quality research and writing by ensuring priorities are clear, decisions are documented, dependencies are visible, collaborators are engaged, and follow-through is reliable. You will also serve as a central connector between Strategic Futures and teams across OpenAI, helping the group build trusted relationships, navigate organizational complexity, and contribute effectively to broader company priorities. As such, this role is based in San Francisco. In this role, you will: - Partner closely with the leader of Strategic Futures to translate the team’s strategic direction into clear priorities, operating plans, and concrete deliverables. - Own team-wide planning and execution across research projects, publications, cross-functional collaborations, public-facing work, and special initiatives. - Convert open-ended goals into structured workplans with clear outcomes, owners, milestones, timelines, dependencies, and decision points. - Develop and maintain lightweight operating systems, including team roadmaps, project trackers, meeting cadences, decision logs, risk registers, and publication or launch plans. - Establish operating rhythms that give the team appropriate visibility and accountability without creating unnecessary process. - Coordinate work across Global Affairs, Legal, Research, product policy, safety, preparedness, Communications, and other relevant teams. - Build productive relationships with internal partners and help ensure Strategic Futures has a clear and consistent presence across the organization. - Prepare executive-ready briefings, strategic updates, presentations, agendas, decision documents, talking points, and other written materials. - Plan and run effective team and cross-functional meetings, ensuring participants are prepared, decisions are captured, and action items are completed. - Anticipate potential bottlenecks, gaps, and competing priorities, and proactively develop solutions that keep work moving. - Maintain visibility across the team’s portfolio and help the team leader make informed prioritization and resource-allocation decisions. - Coordinate internal review and approval processes for research, publications, presentations, and other public-facing work. - Support external engagements, convenings, and public communication when appropriate. - Develop AI-enabled workflows that improve project management, knowledge sharing, information synthesis, coordination, and team effectiveness. - Help define and evolve the team’s operating model, norms, and ways of working as Strategic Futures grows. You might thrive in this role if you: - Have 5 or more years of experience in chief-of-staff roles, program management, strategic operations, research operations, consulting, policy, communications, or a related field. - Have demonstrated success driving complex initiatives involving multiple stakeholders, functions, and competing priorities. - Bring exceptional organizational skills and the ability to create clarity, momentum, and accountability in an ambiguous environment. - Can move fluidly between strategic questions and detailed execution, from helping shape a team-wide priority to ensuring the next meeting has the right pre-read and decision-maker. - Know when a new process or system will improve execution—and when it would simply add unnecessary overhead. - Are energized by helping highly independent researchers and writers do their best work. - Are an excellent writer and synthesizer who can turn complex discussions into clear decisions, plans, briefings, and communications. - Build trusted relationships across policy, legal, communications, product, safety, and technical research teams. - Can engage credibly with subject-matter experts without needing to be the deepest expert in every discipline. - Exercise excellent judgment and discretion when working on sensitive, high-visibility, or still-developing initiatives. - Proactively identify what needs to happen next rather than waiting for detailed direction. - Bring high ownership, strong attention to detail, low ego, and a consistent bias toward action. - Are comfortable operating in a fast-moving organization where priorities may evolve as AI capabilities and external conditions change. - Have strong interest in advanced AI and its long-term implications for public policy, governance, institutions, and society. - Are proficient with AI tools and can apply them thoughtfully to operational workflows, research synthesis, knowledge management, and coordination. It would be nice if you: - Have worked in AI policy, emerging technology, government, public affairs, a think tank, a research organization, or another intellectually intensive environment. - Have supported a senior leader while simultaneously owning a broader portfolio of programs and team operations. - Have experience coordinating research publications, external communications, public events, or other high-visibility outputs. - Have helped establish or scale the operating model of a new team, organization, or function. - Are familiar with the organizational and policy questions surrounding advanced AI. ## 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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