Research Program Manager, Governance

About this role

ABOUT THE TEAM

OpenAI’s Governance team helps shape how the company responsibly develops and deploys increasingly capable AI. We bring together technical evidence, policy, and operational perspectives to help the company address emerging risks, resolve difficult questions, and make well-supported decisions.

Our work includes shaping and improving governance practices, supporting effective oversight, developing clear assessments and recommendations, and ensuring that decisions lead to action. We work closely with research, safety, security, legal, and product teams to identify gaps, reconcile different views, and improve our approach as capabilities and circumstances change.

ABOUT THE ROLE

We are looking for a curious, high-agency Research Program Manager who can reason from first principles, make sense of incomplete or conflicting information, and move difficult work forward. You will help shape the substance of governance reviews, connect ideas and evidence across teams, and develop recommendations that are both well-founded and practical.

The work requires someone who can use established approaches where they fit, recognize when circumstances call for a different approach, and update their thinking as new evidence emerges. You should bring sound judgment, a willingness to experiment and learn, and the program-management discipline to turn good analysis into action.

Depending on your experience and the team’s needs, your work may focus on safety advisory and board-level oversight, deployment governance, or standards and strategic partner commitments.

IN THIS ROLE, YOU WILL:

• Bring together technical, policy, and operational inputs to develop coherent assessments, recommendations, and decision materials for governance bodies and senior leaders.

• Work through emerging or ambiguous questions, test assumptions, identify gaps or conflicting evidence, and help determine what additional analysis or decisions are needed.