Strategic Sourcing Leader, Professional Services

ABOUT THE TEAM OpenAI Finance helps ensure the organisation is positioned for long-term success as we pursue our mission. The Strategic Sourcing & Procurement team helps OpenAI scale responsibly and at speed by choosing the right external partners, structuring strong commercial agreements and building resilient supplier relationships. We partner with teams across the company to turn rapidly evolving needs into practical, economically sound solutions. Professional Services provides specialist expertise and capacity across OpenAI, spanning consulting and advisory, finance and accounting, legal, people-related services and managed services. Our sourcing team helps business leaders define the outcomes they need, select capable partners and establish clear commercial and delivery accountability. ABOUT THE ROLE We are seeking a Strategic Sourcing Leader to lead and develop the Professional Services sourcing team and set direction across its portfolio. This is a people-management role with accountability for team performance, commercial quality, stakeholder experience and sustained business outcomes. You will translate business priorities into category strategies, achievable delivery plans and clear decision authority, while developing the judgement and independence of experienced sourcing professionals. You will oversee a broad portfolio, from strategic advisory relationships and enterprise programmes to a high volume of statements of work and renewals. You will remain hands-on in selected complex negotiations and critical decisions, while enabling the team to own and deliver its work. Working with senior leaders across Finance, Accounting, Legal, People, Extended Workforce and the business, you will create clarity from incomplete information, resolve competing priorities and adapt the team's approach as OpenAI grows. This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We use a hybrid work model of three days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees. IN THIS ROLE, YOU WILL: - Lead and develop the team: set clear objectives and expectations, delegate with appropriate decision boundaries, provide regular feedback, review performance and address persistent gaps. Build development and coverage plans that strengthen capability and reduce reliance on individual experts. - Set the Professional Services portfolio strategy and roadmap, connecting business objectives, demand, spend, supplier markets and risk. Guide category plans and decisions on where to compete, consolidate, retain specialist partners or change the service delivery model. - Manage the team's pipeline and capacity across strategic negotiations, supplier governance and recurring SOWs. Allocate work by capability, complexity and risk; make resource constraints and dependencies visible; and agree priorities and recovery plans before commitments become unachievable. - Personally lead selected critical negotiations and set standards for commercial quality across the team. Review strategy and assumptions early, using credible alternatives and comparable economics to shape scope, resource mix, pricing, deliverables, acceptance criteria, change controls, audit rights and exit protections. - Build proportionate intake, tiering, preferred-partner models, playbooks and review pathways with Procurement Operations, Contract Management, Enablement and control functions. Agree decision rights and usable handovers so repeatable work moves efficiently and material exceptions receive the right attention. - Strengthen supplier relationships and accountability through segmentation, competition, performance reviews and improvement plans. Agree post-signature owners with the business and use service evidence, concentration risk, renewal exposure and transition options to guide supplier decisions. Assess supplier productivity proposals for their effect on staffing, fees, quality and delivery risk. - Partner with Finance and Accounting on spend visibility, demand scenarios, forecasting, approval discipline and invoice-to-contract alignment. Test fee models, staffing assumptions, change exposure and total economics, with clear baselines for savings, cost avoidance and realised value. - Partner with Legal, People and Extended Workforce to select appropriate service models and distinguish Professional Services from contingent labour or hiring needs. Translate specialist guidance into practical safeguards for service delivery, intellectual property, confidentiality and workforce-related risk. - Establish a concise view of portfolio and team performance covering commercial and service outcomes, pipeline health, cycle time, risk, stakeholder experience and team capability. Use evidence to improve decisions, commitments and delivery; distinguish negotiated benefits from value realised. - Build trusted senior stakeholder relationships and challenge demand, scope or supplier preferences constructively. Resolve difficult trade-offs on value, speed, quality and risk, and escalate decisions beyond your authority with clear options and a recommendation. - Personally use approved AI tools and lead adoption of improved sourcing workflows across the team, including supplier research, proposal analysis, negotiation preparation and reporting. Validate sources and calculations, retain human commercial judgement, and measure adoption and gains in quality, speed or capacity. YOU MIGHT THRIVE IN THIS ROLE IF YOU: - Have 10+ years of progressive strategic sourcing, procurement or category management experience, with substantial depth across multiple Professional Services categories and ownership from strategy through supplier performance. - Bring 5+ years of people leadership experience, including formal responsibility for objectives, performance, development and delegation. Can demonstrate stronger team capability, independent judgement and sustained delivery through your leadership. - Have personally led complex services negotiations and can explain the alternatives, commercial decisions and measurable outcomes, while showing how you coach others to deliver comparable quality. - Understand consulting, advisory, managed services and project-based commercial models, including experience with large multidisciplinary firms such as the Big Four and specialist providers. Bring breadth across areas such as finance, accounting, legal, healthcare or benefits-related services, alongside sound judgement on workforce boundaries. - Have turned category strategies into practical operating improvements, balancing standardisation with flexibility and strategic work with recurring demand. Can show adoption, reliable delivery and stronger stakeholder experience. - Influence senior stakeholders through trust, structured thinking and concise communication. Can work through disagreement, make trade-offs explicit and seek decisions at the right level. - Bring strong financial and analytical judgement, using imperfect spend, supplier and performance data to compare options, test assumptions and verify business value beyond negotiated savings. - Lead effectively through ambiguity, rapid change and limited structure. Can reset priorities, invite challenge and adapt working practices to different company stages, operating models and organisational cultures. - Have practical experience using AI to redesign sourcing work and helping others adopt it, with clear human review, quality checks and evidence of improvement. - Create an inclusive team environment with clear expectations, constructive feedback and room for respectful challenge. Combine accountability with coaching, recognise progress and build resilience through prioritisation and dependable support. 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. 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