Strategic Partner Manager Lead

About the role:

The Strategic Partnerships Lead will manage and grow OpenAI’s most critical partner relationships. This role involves executing a comprehensive partnerships strategy that drives meaningful impact for both OpenAI and its partners. Given the breadth of these relationships—spanning research, product, engineering, marketing, and finance—success requires a cross-functional approach with frequent executive visibility.

The ideal candidate is a strategic thinker with a proven background in partner management, excellent analytical and data-driven decision-making skills, strong relationship management abilities, and the executive presence to engage at the C-suite level. You should have a deep understanding of how to build and scale product-centric partnerships across enterprise and consumer markets.

In this role, you'll:

• Manage and develop a portfolio of strategic partners aligned with OpenAI's objectives and long-term vision.

• Own the partnership roadmap with clear milestones, timelines, and success metrics (e.g., platform adoption, revenue growth, and joint product launches).

• Continuously analyze the market landscape to identify opportunities for expanding existing partnerships and driving new initiatives.

• Take full ownership of revenue, growth, and P&L targets related to strategic partnerships.

Partner Relationship Management

• Act as the primary point of contact for key technology and platform partners, building strong, long-term relationships that drive mutual success.

• Lead partner communications, including quarterly business reviews and executive updates.

• Analyze partnership performance using data and insights to optimize outcomes and identify opportunities for expansion.

• Negotiate, renew, and scale partnership agreements to maximize value for both OpenAI and the partner.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Develop a deep understanding of OpenAI’s products, ecosystem, and strategic priorities.

• Collaborate with Product, Engineering, and Go-to-Market teams to ensure seamless integration of partner technologies and accelerated market adoption.

• Work with Legal and Finance to oversee contracts, compliance, and renewals.

• Partner with Marketing and Communications teams to drive joint go-to-market initiatives, co-marketing campaigns, and product launches.

Operational Excellence

• Track, analyze, and report on partnership performance metrics, providing actionable insights to leadership.

• Maintain accurate documentation of agreements, performance data, and key communications.

• Ensure all partnerships align with company strategy and deliver measurable value.

• Identify and proactively resolve operational challenges that could impact partner success.

• Drive internal team updates (e.g. weekly updates, executive briefs, upcoming launches).

We're seeking someone with experience including:

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Technology, Economics, or a related field (MBA a plus).

• 10+ years of experience in strategic partnerships, business development, platform product management or strategic alliances within the technology sector.

• Demonstrated success in managing and growing complex, high-impact partnerships.

• Experience in high-growth startup or fast-paced technology environments.

• Exceptional analytical skills with the ability to leverage data to drive strategic decisions.

• Outstanding communication, negotiation, and executive relationship-building skills.

• Strong bias for action and the ability to operate both independently and as part of cross-functional teams.

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.

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