Business Lead, Special Situations

The role

The Business Lead serves as the operating leader for a strategic initiative anchored in a major partnership. This person will develop strategy, operating plans, and decision structures to drive execution across product, technical, and commercial teams.

What you will do

• Own the initiative's integrated strategy and operating plan.
• Structure complex and ambiguous business problems into executable plans.
• Define success measures and build operating reviews.
• Drive high-priority initiatives from definition through implementation.
• Translate strategic priorities into commercial, product, technical, and go-to-market workstreams.
• Prepare executive decision materials and establish governance.
• Identify cross-functional dependencies and resolve blockers.
• Build and run an internal and external operating cadence.
• Develop relationships across executive, commercial, product, technical, legal, finance, and partner teams.
• Stand up a joint go-to-market motion and drive the first cohort of customers.

Required qualifications

• Substantial experience in strategy and operations, business operations, general management, or strategic initiatives.
• A track record as the accountable operator for consequential outcomes.
• Exceptional structured problem-solving skills.
• Strong analytical and business judgment.
• Excellent program and operating leadership.
• Clear, concise executive communication.
• Strong product judgment and technical fluency.
• Commercial judgment and experience contributing to negotiations.
• Exceptional internal and external relationship leadership.
• Experience working across company boundaries with partners or customers.
• High agency, low ego, and sound judgment.
• Exceptional follow-through in fast-moving environments with incomplete information.

Nice to have

• A formal business development or partnerships background is not required

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.