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Senior Manager – Strategic Sourcing – Product & Engineering Technology
| Company | OpenAI |
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| Location | San Francisco, CA, USA |
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| Salary | $285000 – $285000 |
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| Type | Full-Time |
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| Degrees | |
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| Experience Level | Expert or higher |
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Requirements
- 10+ years in software, cloud, and technical procurement, ideally in high-scale, product-led, or research-driven environments.
- Technical fluency to engage credibly with engineers and security teams on infrastructure concepts like cloud architecture, distributed systems, APIs, and developer platforms.
- A track record of structuring and negotiating non-standard, usage-based, API-driven, or deeply technical agreements.
- Strong collaboration and communication skills with diverse stakeholders—such as Engineering, Product, Security, Legal, and Finance—with a focus on clarity, consistency, and responsiveness.
- Analytical rigor to interpret usage data, pricing models, and growth forecasts to inform sourcing decisions and negotiation strategies.
- Experience managing vendor relationships across renewals, performance reviews, escalations, and compliance.
- An autonomous, ownership mindset to independently drive work forward with urgency and precision, and balances detail with clarity.
- Strong alignment with OpenAI’s values and commitment to enabling its research and product goals through effective sourcing.
Responsibilities
- Lead sourcing and negotiation efforts for software, infrastructure, APIs, and security services that directly support OpenAI’s product development and research.
- Partner closely with Engineering, Product, Research, and Security teams to understand technical requirements and translate them into sourcing strategies and commercial models.
- Design and execute category strategies that anticipate growth across compute, observability, orchestration, developer tooling, and security infrastructure.
- Negotiate custom, usage-based, and non-standard agreements, focusing on flexibility, scalability, and alignment with how technical teams actually build and operate.
- Collaborate with Legal, Security, and Engineering to evaluate vendors, address data protection and architecture needs, and close contracts quickly and safely.
- Support infrastructure and cloud spend governance, helping teams plan for growth, optimize costs, and manage vendor performance.
- Serve as a sourcing advisor to technical leadership, providing clarity on commercial risks, options, and best practices.
- Continuously improve sourcing processes to keep pace with OpenAI’s speed and technical complexity.
Preferred Qualifications
No preferred qualifications provided.
