Product Counsel, Research

OpenAI's Legal team plays a crucial role in furthering OpenAI's mission by tackling innovative, fundamental legal issues in AI. If you're passionate about doing significant and unique work as a technology lawyer, this team is for you. The team comprises professionals from diverse fields, including technology, AI, privacy, IP, corporate, employment, tax law, regulatory, and litigation.

About the Role

As a member of our AI Product Counsel team focusing on research, you will assist with legal initiatives related to our advanced AI models and technologies. You’ll partner closely with researchers and engineers to help them plan, develop, and align models such as GPT-5, image and voice models, and OpenAI reasoning models, as well as our future research roadmap. This is a unique opportunity to engage directly with the forefront of the legal and AI fields. This role reports to our lead counsel for AI Research.

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:

• Be the go-to counsel and partner for several research teams focused on AI research and model development.

• Identify and address copyright, regulatory, privacy, and other legal risks and mitigations related to AI model development and deployment.

• Develop strategies for handling legal issues in creative ways and build processes for scaling flexible solutions that address risk.

• Become an expert in AI legal matters and help propose and advance AI legal policy positions.

You’ll enjoy this role if you:

• Have 5+ years of experience with a mix of in-house and technology-focused law firm roles, including significant copyright experience.

• Understand the letter of the law and can approach problems in a practical, principled approach.

• Build cross-functional relationships and communication styles that resonate with teams to balance risk-taking with responsible development.

• Have a strong sense of ownership, are inquisitive and enthusiastic about technology, enjoy being continually challenged, and can demonstrate sound judgment in ambiguous situations.

• Have a JD and license or qualification to practice in CA.

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.

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with applicable law, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act. 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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