Cloud Strategy, Operations & Programs Lead

About The Team

OpenAI’s mission is to build safe artificial general intelligence (AGI) that benefits all of humanity. This long-term undertaking brings the world’s best scientists, engineers, and business professionals into one lab to accomplish it.

OpenAI’s Go-To-Market (GTM) Partnerships team builds a strategic, global partner ecosystem designed to accelerate customer success, enable AI adoption, and drive growth in support of our mission. We collaborate closely across internal teams to ensure unified strategy and seamless execution.

About The Role

As part of the Partner Strategy, Operations & Programs team, this role will help stand up and scale our cloud GTM motion globally. You will shape how we operationalize cloud co-sell and marketplace motions, translate partnership goals into clear workflows and rules of engagement, drive the cross-functional orchestration required to stand up new ways of working, and drive disciplined execution through a global team of specialists.

This is a foundational leadership role for someone who understands hyperscaler motions deeply and knows what it takes to operationalize them at scale. You know what it takes to move from early partnership activation to a scalable cloud business: co-sell design, marketplace operations, systems integration, pipeline governance, cloud programs and incentives, commercial and financial implications, and the many cross-functional decisions required to drive the motion end to end.

In This Role You Will

• Partner closely with the Head of Cloud GTM Alliances, Partnerships leadership, and cross-functional stakeholders to shape, operationalize, and execute cloud co-sell and marketplace motions.
• Translate evolving partnership and go-to-market plans into clear rules of engagement, workflows, governance, handoffs, activation guidance, and execution plans for internal teams.
• Serve as the internal subject matter expert on hyperscaler co-sell, marketplace, and related cloud programs, advising teams on both near-term decisions and longer-term scale considerations.
• Stand up and evolve the operating model supporting cloud opportunity management, marketplace transactions, and related workflows across the business.
• Drive cross-functional orchestration across Sales, Revenue Operations, Deal Desk, Finance, Revenue, Billing & Collections, Legal, Systems, Enablement, and other stakeholders to implement new processes and resolve complex issues.
• Define business requirements and partner on the design and implementation of supporting systems, automations, integrations, and data flows needed to scale the cloud GTM motion.
• Build and run the operating cadence for the cloud business, including KPI frameworks, dashboards, executive reviews, pipeline inspection, issue management, and decision-making forums.
• Identify and operationalize cloud programmatic opportunities, including incentives, funding, international expansion requirements, and the introduction of new products into the motion over time.
• Lead and scale a global team of specialists responsible for day-to-day execution across cloud programs and operations.
• Drive continuous improvement as the business scales, bringing rigor to exception handling, process refinement, and evolving business requirements.

You Might Thrive In This Role If You Have

• 8+ years of experience in GTM Strategy & Operations at a high-growth technology company, with meaningful exposure driving partner / channel / ecosystem motions.
• Meaningful depth in hyperscaler ecosystems, including experience helping build or scale co-sell and marketplace motions with major cloud providers; AWS experience strongly preferred.
• Deep understanding of the mechanics behind cloud GTM, including opportunity sharing, cloud-led sales and co-sell motions, marketplace and private-offer workflows, systems and data requirements, governance, forecasting, and commercial operations.
• Experience leading complex cross-functional initiatives that changed how teams sell, transact, forecast, or operate.
• Strong systems thinking, with the ability to translate ambiguous goals into scalable processes, tooling requirements, operating cadences, and measurable outcomes.
• Experience building and leading high-performing teams, including globally distributed specialists or operators.
• Comfort acting as a strategic advisor, builder, and operator.
• Strong communication skills and judgment, including the ability to influence senior stakeholders across both line and cross-functional organizations.
• Ability to thrive in high-ambiguity environments where the motion is still being built and refined, and where success requires both depth and range.

Workplace & Location

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

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.