Deal Lead, Special Situations at OpenAI

Deal Lead, Special Situations

Location

San Francisco

Employment Type

Full time

Department

Partnerships

Compensation

• $370K • Offers Equity

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.

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.

About the team

Special Situations at OpenAI is the company’s commercial engine for its most complex and consequential opportunities. The team operates where new verticals, partnership models, and customer motions must be invented—before a repeatable GTM or delivery playbook exists—by bringing together product, research, engineering, and GTM leaders around a single outcome.

Many of these efforts begin as “new bets” (new verticals, new customer motions, new partnership models) and mature into repeatable ways of working that shape how OpenAI operates at scale. The team acts as a force-multiplier for the company by accelerating decision-making, aligning stakeholders, and converting complex opportunities into durable results.

About the role

We’re hiring a Deal Lead, Special Situations to stand up new vertical bets across financial services, life sciences, semiconductors, and energy. You will research industries you know deeply, identify where AI can create step-change value, originate and shape multi-project programs with FDEs and applied researchers, package them into compelling technical and commercial proposals, and execute creative, complex partnerships—while keeping executives and cross-functional teams tightly aligned.

Special Situations owns the overall success of each program, including commercial outcomes, while functional teams own execution decisions within their domains. You will engage executive sponsors when decisions have org- or company-level implications. You will set direction, build the coalition required to achieve it, structure the partnership and improve decision quality and velocity. When the work can move without Special Situations, you’ll shift to the next highest-leverage opportunity.

In this role, you will:

• Identify and size high-value opportunities within financial services, life sciences, semiconductors, and energy, translating industry pain points into concrete AI-driven commercial theses

• Map the partnership and competitive landscape in your vertical and design differentiated partnership strategies that OpenAI can win and scale

• Work with FDEs and applied researchers to design multi-project programs that combine models, tooling, data, and services into outcomes customers will pay for

• Define use cases, scope, sequencing, and success metrics that turn ambiguous opportunities into executable programs

• Create the technical and commercial narratives (decks, demos, proposals, and deal memos) that align customers, executives, and internal teams around a single plan

• Structure and negotiate non-standard partnerships, including revenue share, royalties, and bespoke commercial terms, through contract signature

• Drive executive-level alignment and decision-making on tradeoffs, resourcing, and risk

You may thrive in this role if you:

• Have 15+ years in business development, partnerships, corporate development, private equity or founding roles where you personally drove and closed complex, high-dollar deals from concept through delivery

• Have deep domain experience in financial services, life sciences, semiconductors, or energy, including an understanding of how large enterprises in those sectors buy, partner, and deploy technology

• Can take a vague opportunity and turn it into a clear commercial thesis that customers, executives, and technical teams can buy into and commit budget against

• Excel at building and closing non-standard deals that combine product, services, and long-term strategic value rather than off-the-shelf SKUs

• Know how to navigate large, sophisticated buyers, align multiple stakeholders, and keep deals moving when no one has full authority or clarity

• Strengthen decisions by framing commercial and technical trade-offs early so partners and OpenAI leadership can commit with confidence

• Maintain momentum as scope, pricing, risk, and partnership structures evolve