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OpenAI's Finance team is seeking a Strategic Sourcing Lead to own the Professional Services category strategy and execution. This is a hands-on, individual-contributor role for an experienced sourcing operator who will set category priorities, manage a broad portfolio of services engagements, and build scalable sourcing mechanisms in a rapidly growing organization.
You will manage complex professional services relationships spanning consulting, advisory, finance and accounting, legal, people and talent, and managed services. Working directly with senior leaders across Finance, Accounting, Legal, People, Extended Workforce, and business teams, you will translate evolving needs into clear sourcing strategies, executable engagement models, and measurable outcomes. You will operate independently across multiple concurrent deals, knowing when to align, escalate, or redirect approaches to protect speed, value, and risk.
Key responsibilities include: owning and evolving the Professional Services category strategy and roadmap; managing multiple complex sourcing workstreams end to end, balancing strategic negotiations with high-throughput engagements; building trusted partnerships with senior stakeholders and challenging proposed models when better approaches exist; leading complex negotiations and designing fit-for-purpose commercial structures including MSAs, SOWs, and outcome-based pricing; building scalable category mechanisms such as intake, tiering, preferred-partner models, and approval pathways; strengthening the supplier ecosystem through competitive sourcing and performance governance; partnering with Finance on spend visibility and forecasting; partnering with Legal and People to distinguish professional services from contingent labor and reduce co-employment and IP risk; producing executive-ready reporting on pipeline health, savings, cycle time, and supplier performance; and using AI to redesign sourcing workflows for improved speed and decision quality.
Ideal candidates have 8+ years of progressive strategic sourcing or category management experience with significant Professional Services depth. You should have owned Professional Services category strategy end to end, led complex high-stakes negotiations, understand consulting and managed services dynamics, have built or improved category operating mechanisms, and demonstrated experience using AI to enhance sourcing workflows. The role is based in San Francisco with a hybrid model of three days in-office per week.
