Strategic Sourcing Lead, Professional Services

About the Team

OpenAI Finance ensures the organization is positioned for long-term success as we pursue our mission.

The Strategic Sourcing & Procurement function plays a critical role in enabling OpenAI to deliver impact across its most important flywheels — research, product development, technology infrastructure, and services — by ensuring the company can scale responsibly, securely, and with strong commercial discipline.

Our work sits at the intersection of innovation and execution. We partner closely with Research, Engineering, Product, Marketing, Finance, Legal, Security, and Workforce teams to translate rapidly evolving business needs into scalable, compliant, and economically sound external partnerships. As OpenAI continues to grow at pace, the ability to engage third-party expertise quickly — while maintaining consistency, governance, and long-term value — has become a strategic imperative.

About the Role

Professional Services is one of OpenAI’s largest and fastest-growing spend categories, encompassing hundreds of vendors and material spend across consulting, advisory, engineering services, research services, legal, compliance, and other specialized professional engagements.

We are hiring a Professional Services Strategic Category Lead to own and mature OpenAI’s end-to-end strategy for professional services partnerships. You will bring cohesion, discipline, and forward-looking category design to a highly fragmented supplier ecosystem. You will also partner closely with senior business leaders to define how OpenAI engages professional services firms — from intake and commercial models through governance, risk management, and long-term supplier strategy.

This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.

In this role, you will:

• Own the global Professional Services category strategy, including supplier segmentation, engagement models, and long-term roadmap.

• Define and standardize frameworks for how professional services are sourced, contracted, and governed across the company.

• Establish clear category guardrails to balance speed, flexibility, cost efficiency, and compliance.

• Lead strategic relationships with OpenAI’s most critical professional services partners.

• Rationalize a fragmented supplier base by identifying consolidation, tiering, and preferred-partner opportunities.

• Partner with Finance to improve cost transparency, rate structures, volume leverage, and forecasting across the category.

• Partner closely with Legal and Extended Workforce teams to mitigate co-employment and regulatory risks.

• Ensure professional services engagements are structured and operated in line with internal policies and external compliance requirements.

• Introduce clearer governance for scope control, renewals, expansions, and offboarding.

• Act as the primary strategic interface between Procurement and senior stakeholders across Research, Engineering, G&A, and Operations.

• Influence decision-making through clear executive-level communication, data-driven insights, and structured recommendations.

You might thrive in this role if you have:

• 10+ years of experience in strategic sourcing, category management, consulting, or commercial leadership roles in fast-scaling, ambiguous environments.

• Experience managing categories with co-employment or workforce classification risk.

• Demonstrated ownership of large, complex professional services or consulting categories.

• Strong commercial acumen across rate structures, SOW-based services, and vendor operating models.

• Experience partnering with senior Finance, Legal, and HR/Workforce stakeholders

• Familiarity with procurement systems (e.g., Zip, Ironclad) at a portfolio and governance level.

• Executive-ready written and verbal communication skills.