---
title: 'Senior Manager, Occupancy Planning & Workplace Strategy at OpenAI'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-manager-occupancy-planning-workplace-strategy-openai-san-francisco-jf1qadmw5mcp'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-11-05'
---

# Senior Manager, Occupancy Planning & Workplace Strategy at OpenAI

- **Company:** [OpenAI](https://feeny.ai/companies/openai)
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Compensation:** $203k–$225k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-10-07
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-05
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/5280c9d2-8090-47d1-a881-1fec37c90e64

## Job description

## About the Team

OpenAI’s Real Estate & Workplace (REW) team creates and operates the spaces that support our people and our mission. Within REW, the Strategic Occupancy Planning team connects business needs, workplace strategy, and space data to help shape where and how our teams work. We partner closely with business leaders, Finance, People, Workplace Operations, and Design & Construction to anticipate growth, optimize space utilization, and deliver a thoughtful, scalable workplace experience.

## About the Role

We’re looking for an experienced Occupancy Planning & Workplace Strategy Manager to lead strategic space planning for our Go-to-Market (GTM) and General & Administrative (G&A) organizations. In this role, you’ll translate evolving business needs into actionable occupancy strategies, capacity scenarios, and workplace recommendations. You’ll serve as a trusted partner to business leaders, balancing growth projections, operational requirements, and employee experience to inform decisions about how our teams use space. You’ll own planning across a complex, evolving portfolio while leveraging CAFM/IWMS systems and data analytics to drive accurate, scalable decision-making. This role requires a combination of strategic thinking, hands-on technical expertise, and strong cross-functional partnership to turn planning recommendations into operational outcomes. This role is based in San Francisco. We use a hybrid work model of three days in the office per week, with approximately 10–20% travel.

In This Role, You Will

- Own strategic occupancy planning for GTM and G&A organizations, translating headcount forecasts, business priorities, and workplace needs into actionable space plans.
- Develop and evaluate capacity scenarios, neighborhood strategies, team adjacencies, seating models, and space allocation recommendations to support organizational growth.
- Partner with business leaders and executive stakeholders to understand evolving requirements, communicate trade-offs, and align workplace strategies with business objectives.
- Collaborate with Finance, People, Analytics, Design & Construction, and Workplace Operations to reconcile forecasts, assess capacity constraints, and guide planning decisions through implementation.
- Translate workplace needs into practical stacking, blocking, and move plans, ensuring recommendations account for operational feasibility, timing, and employee experience.
- Leverage CAFM/IWMS platforms and analytical tools to maintain accurate space inventories, floor plans, seating allocations, and utilization data.
- Identify and resolve space data discrepancies, establish quality controls, and partner with internal system owners and external vendors to improve data reliability.
- Develop dashboards, planning workflows, and reporting tools that improve visibility into occupancy trends, capacity risks, and portfolio performance.
- Drive continuous improvement in occupancy planning processes, including opportunities for automation, system enhancements, and scalable planning practices.
- Support workplace change initiatives by partnering with cross-functional teams to ensure clear communication, coordinated execution, and successful transitions.

You Might Thrive in This Role If You

- Bring 5–8+ years of experience in occupancy planning, workplace strategy, space management, or a related field, with experience independently managing complex, multi-team or multi-site portfolios.
- Have a strong track record of translating business growth, headcount projections, and workplace requirements into practical, data-informed space strategies.
- Possess hands-on experience with CAFM/IWMS platforms, including space inventory management, floor plans, seating allocations, data reconciliation, and reporting.
- Are highly analytical and comfortable developing scenarios, evaluating trade-offs, and translating complex data into clear recommendations for senior stakeholders.
- Excel at building trusted relationships with business leaders and cross-functional partners, influencing decisions without direct authority.
- Can balance long-term strategic planning with hands-on execution in a fast-paced environment where priorities and requirements evolve quickly.
- Have experience supporting workplace transitions, flexible seating strategies, organizational growth, or large-scale space planning initiatives.
- Communicate clearly and effectively, whether presenting recommendations to executives, documenting planning assumptions, or coordinating implementation across teams.
- Are comfortable navigating ambiguity, identifying opportunities for process improvement, and building scalable solutions.

Experience with OfficeSpace or comparable CAFM/IWMS platforms, CAD or floor-plan tools, business intelligence platforms, system migrations, and vendor management is a 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. 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 characteristics. For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action Policy. Applicants with disabilities may be entitled to reasonable accommodations. Requests for reasonable accommodations can be made via our accommodation request process.

## 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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