The base pay offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factors, including market location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. If the role is non-exempt, overtime pay will be provided consistent with applicable laws. In addition to the salary range listed above, total compensation also includes generous equity, performance-related bonus(es) for eligible employees, and the following benefits.

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance for you and your family, with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts

• Pre-tax accounts for Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and commuter expenses (parking and transit)

• 401(k) retirement plan with employer match

• Paid parental leave (up to 24 weeks for birth parents and 20 weeks for non-birthing parents), plus paid medical and caregiver leave (up to 8 weeks)

• Paid time off: flexible PTO for exempt employees and up to 15 days annually for non-exempt employees

• 13+ paid company holidays, and multiple paid coordinated company office closures throughout the year for focus and recharge, plus paid sick or safe time (1 hour per 30 hours worked, or more, as required by applicable state or local law)

• Mental health and wellness support

• Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage

• Annual learning and development stipend to fuel your professional growth

• Daily meals in our offices, and meal delivery credits as eligible

• Relocation support for eligible employees

• Additional taxable fringe benefits, such as charitable donation matching and wellness stipends, may also be provided.

More details about our benefits are available to candidates during the hiring process.

This role is at-will and OpenAI reserves the right to modify base pay and other compensation components at any time based on individual performance, team or company results, or market conditions.

About the Team:

OpenAI’s Early-Stage Ecosystem team identifies and wins the next generation of startups that will matter most.

About the Role:

As an IC Ecosystem Lead, you will own a small, high-leverage portfolio of relationships quarterly (~5–15) with exceptional founders and technical teams - often before the market fully recognizes them. Your work will shape OpenAI’s reputation in the ecosystem, accelerate breakthrough partner outcomes, and create a durable pipeline of applied and research collaborations that benefit startups and help inform our product and model roadmap.

This is a high-taste, high-agency role at the intersection of founder trust, technical depth, and cross-functional execution. You’ll operate closely with research, product, and go-to-market teams, as well as internal evaluation and model-improvement partners - turning startup needs into concrete technical engagements, evaluation work, and strategic opportunities.

What You’ll Do:

Own a portfolio of high-taste startup relationships

• Manage ~5–15 key startup partnerships at any time (mix of new bets + series-a folks).

• Build deep founder trust through fast, thoughtful support and clear value creation.

• Identify the “correct” emerging companies each quarter - especially those likely to become major partners within ~24 months.

• Convert portfolio startups into high-touch strategic engagements by surfacing high-value evaluation opportunities and managing them end-to-end.

Shape OpenAI’s early-stage perception and founder preference

• Identify the “correct” emerging companies each quarter - especially those likely to become major partners within ~24 months.

• Create and host high-quality founder gatherings with strong attendance bars.

• Work with Comms and Developer Experience to produce technical content (blogs, short-form, talks) that resonates with the next generation of founders.

• Build niche technical micro-communities around key developer/founder interests.

Drive evals and research-adjacent engagements

• Partner with solutions and evaluation teams to translate real-world product usage into actionable improvements.

Execute creative strategic/commercial work

• Support strategic recruiting and other high-conviction cross-functional opportunities as needed.

• Collaborate with co-sell / co-market motions when it accelerates top partners.

• Act as a sharp internal signal: what’s real in the ecosystem, what’s buzz.

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.

To notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant, please submit a report through this form. No response will be provided to inquiries unrelated to job posting compliance.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link.

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At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.

Compensation Range: $205K - $255K