Compensation Operations Analyst

About the Team
OpenAI’s People team supports a complex, rapidly growing organization of researchers, engineers, and business teams. The Compensation function ensures accuracy, scalability, and operational excellence across all compensation tools, systems, and data flows.

About the Role
We’re hiring a Compensation Operations Analyst to build and run the systems, tools, and processes that power compensation at OpenAI. This role is deeply operational and technical: you will configure HRIS modules, manage compensation tools end-to-end, maintain pristine data quality, and ensure compensation cycles run flawlessly. You’ll partner closely with People Systems, Total Rewards, Finance, and vendors to keep our compensation infrastructure accurate, scalable, and audit-ready. This role reports to our Head of Compensation.

Your Responsibilities:

• Own configuration and day-to-day operations of compensation tools and HRIS compensation modules.

• Manage annual and off-cycle compensation processes, ensuring data integrity, testing, QA, and on-time execution.

• Build and maintain compensation datasets, dashboards, audits, and data flows across systems.

• Lead compensation vendor relationships, including implementation, troubleshooting, and data submissions.

• Diagnose and resolve system issues, identify root causes, and drive process and tooling improvements.

• Partner with People Systems and Engineering to enhance architecture, workflows, and automation.

• Ensure high data accuracy across compensation systems and proactively identify gaps, risks, or anomalies.

• Translate technical or complex compensation system issues into clear guidance for stakeholders.

We’re Seeking:

• 5+ years in compensation operations, HRIS systems, or total rewards tooling in high-growth or tech environments.

• Strong HRIS configuration experience (Workday preferred), especially compensation planning modules.

• High technical fluency: advanced Excel; familiarity with BI tools (Tableau/Looker); SQL/Python is a plus.

• Rigor and precision in data auditing, validation, and lifecycle management.

• Ability to manage and optimize tools at scale while navigating fast-moving environments.

• Excellent cross-functional communication and comfort working with technical partners.

• Action-oriented, organized, and reliable under tight deadlines.

• Strong ownership mindset and bias toward simple, scalable systems.

Workplace & Location
This role is based in our San Francisco office. We offer relocation support to new employees, and we use a hybrid work model: three days in the office per week with optional work from home on Thursdays and Fridays.

While we aren't actively considering remote applications, we do encourage you to apply anyways for future remote opportunities. Please indicate your preferred working locations in your application.

Our open-plan offices have height-adjustable desks, conference rooms, phone booths, well-stocked kitchens full of snacks and drinks, three in-house prepared meals daily, a private outdoor space for working in the sun or socializing, nap rooms, private bike storage, and more.

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.

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.

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