Research Program Manager, Governance

The role

You will develop assessments, recommendations, and decision materials for governance bodies and senior leaders. You will drive cross-functional work to implement governance reviews and improve practices as AI capabilities evolve.

What you will do

• Develop assessments, recommendations, and decision materials for governance bodies and senior leaders.
• Work through emerging or ambiguous questions and identify gaps or conflicting evidence.
• Engage with experts to understand research, evaluations, safeguards, and risk assessments.
• Partner with governance-body chairs and technical leaders to shape reviews and communicate conclusions.
• Translate decisions into concrete work with owners, milestones, and dependencies.
• Drive work across teams and resolve blockers or escalate disagreements.
• Help teams understand applicable governance processes and integrate reviews into plans.
• Maintain clear records of decisions, rationale, and unresolved questions.
• Help improve governance practices, standards, and guidance.
• Build and refine practical tools and operating cadences.

Required qualifications

• Experience leading complex, cross-functional work in a research, technology, policy, safety, security, governance, or related environment.
• Ability to take initiative and find practical ways forward when requirements are unclear.
• Ability to learn unfamiliar subjects to ask questions and test arguments.
• Ability to synthesize complicated or conflicting information.
• Ability to write clearly and precisely for senior decision-makers.
• Strong program-management fundamentals.
• Ability to exercise sound judgment in sensitive situations.
• Willingness to try new approaches and change mind when evidence changes.
• Ability to build useful structure without adding unnecessary process.
• Care for the responsible development and deployment of increasingly capable AI systems.

Nice to have

• Research program management or strategy and operations in a technically complex organization.
• AI safety, preparedness, model evaluations, cybersecurity, or technical risk management.
• Advisory committees, board-facing work, executive decision support, or other consequential reviews.
• Translating policies, standards, or governance decisions into practical requirements and programs.
• Strategic partnerships or sensitive deployment contexts.

About the company

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. They seek to safely deploy AI to the world through their products.