Construction PMO Lead, Design & Construction Operations

About The Team

OpenAI Finance is responsible for ensuring the organization is set up for success in pursuit of its mission.

The Procurement team advises our business partners to make the best investments, ensures we acquire the resources needed for growth, and enables our mission through efficient procurement practices.

About The Role

OpenAI is expanding its construction footprint to power advanced AI workloads at unprecedented scale. We’re building a world-class Construction Program Management Office (PMO) to ensure disciplined, predictable, and standardized execution across our capital projects portfolio.

We are seeking a construction operations and program governance leader to build and drive core PMO functions — including program controls, processes, templatization, reporting, risk management, vendor governance, and delivery standards across all projects and regions.

You will design and implement the operating system for how OpenAI executes design and construction globally, partnering closely with Real Estate, Engineering, Design, Procurement, Finance, and Project Controls to safeguard schedule, cost, quality, and risk.

This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.

In This Role, You Will:

• Establish PMO operating model, governance rhythms, and workflows for global build programs.
• Develop buying strategies, create and maintain program playbooks, delivery standards, RACI frameworks, and execution SOPs.
• Stand up program health dashboards, schedule controls, and standardized reporting across project lifecycles.
• Lead complex, strategic RFP processes across Real Estate and other construction categories, ensuring alignment with business and financial goals.
• Manage and negotiate a high volume of strategic deals end-to-end using Zip (sourcing intake) and Ironclad (contract negotiation).
• Partner with executive leadership to plan long-term capital sourcing roadmaps and supplier capacity alignment.
• Manage a global ecosystem of architecture, engineering, and construction firms, as well as service partners for workplace, robotics, and operational support.
• Establish supplier KPIs, performance scorecards, and governance models across numerous disciplines per site.
• Partner with Legal to structure scalable commercial frameworks and contracting templates.
• Support downstream procurement change orders, and operational contracting in partnership with Buyers and Project Controls.
• Collaborate with Project Controls and Finance to forecast spend, validate budgets, and ensure real-time cost transparency.
• Proactively identify delivery bottlenecks, operational risks, and systemic improvement opportunities.
• Build scalable mechanisms to accelerate speed-to-build while maintaining quality, safety, and commercial discipline.
• You might thrive in this role if you have:
• Proactively identify delivery bottlenecks, operational risks, and systemic improvement opportunities.
• Build scalable mechanisms to accelerate speed-to-build while maintaining quality, safety, and commercial discipline.
• You might thrive in this role if you have:
• 10+ years of strategic sourcing, procurement, cost control, or commercial management experience — ideally across large capital projects, REWS, or high-tech operations.
• Proven success leading complex portfolios spanning construction, facilities, robotics, or engineering services.
• Proven success implementing standardized delivery frameworks across multiple geos and project teams.
• Deep understanding of contracting models (Lump Sum, GMP, CMAR, T&M) and service operations procurement.
• Deep experience with cost, schedule, change control, and risk management practices.
• Experience establishing category playbooks, supplier performance frameworks, and savings governance.
• Excellent stakeholder management across technical and executive functions.
• Comfort navigating ambiguity and building scalable sourcing processes in high-growth, high-stakes environments.

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.

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. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

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