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OpenAI's Finance team is seeking a Strategic Sourcing Leader to lead and develop the Professional Services sourcing team. 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 spanning strategic advisory relationships, enterprise programmes, 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.
Key responsibilities include:
- Leading and developing the team: setting clear objectives, delegating with appropriate decision boundaries, providing regular feedback, and building development and coverage plans that strengthen capability.
- Setting the Professional Services portfolio strategy and roadmap, connecting business objectives, demand, spend, supplier markets and risk.
- Managing the team's pipeline and capacity across strategic negotiations, supplier governance and recurring SOWs, allocating work by capability, complexity and risk.
- Personally leading selected critical negotiations and setting standards for commercial quality across the team.
- Building proportionate intake, tiering, preferred-partner models and playbooks with Procurement Operations, Contract Management and control functions.
- Strengthening supplier relationships and accountability through segmentation, competition, performance reviews and improvement plans.
- Partnering with Finance and Accounting on spend visibility, demand scenarios, forecasting and invoice-to-contract alignment.
- Partnering with Legal, People and Extended Workforce to select appropriate service models and manage workforce-related risk.
- Establishing a concise view of portfolio and team performance covering commercial and service outcomes, pipeline health, cycle time, risk and team capability.
- Building trusted senior stakeholder relationships and challenging demand, scope or supplier preferences constructively.
- Leading adoption of improved sourcing workflows across the team, including supplier research, proposal analysis and negotiation preparation using approved AI tools.
The role is based in San Francisco with a hybrid work model of three days in office per week. Relocation assistance is offered to new employees.
REQUIREMENTS:
- 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.
- 5+ years of people leadership experience, including formal responsibility for objectives, performance, development and delegation, with demonstrated stronger team capability, independent judgement and sustained delivery.
- Personally led complex services negotiations and can explain alternatives, commercial decisions and measurable outcomes while coaching others to deliver comparable quality.
- Understanding of consulting, advisory, managed services and project-based commercial models, including experience with large multidisciplinary firms such as the Big Four and specialist providers. Breadth across finance, accounting, legal, healthcare or benefits-related services.
- Turned category strategies into practical operating improvements, balancing standardisation with flexibility and strategic work with recurring demand, with evidence of adoption, reliable delivery and stronger stakeholder experience.
- Ability to influence senior stakeholders through trust, structured thinking and concise communication, working through disagreement and making trade-offs explicit.
- Strong financial and analytical judgement, using imperfect spend, supplier and performance data to compare options, test assumptions and verify business value.
- Ability to lead effectively through ambiguity, rapid change and limited structure, resetting priorities and adapting working practices to different company stages and organisational cultures.
- Practical experience using AI to redesign sourcing work and helping others adopt it, with clear human review, quality checks and evidence of improvement.
- Ability to create an inclusive team environment with clear expectations, constructive feedback and room for respectful challenge, combining accountability with coaching.
