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Early Career Mechanical Design Engineer in San Francisco

182 active opportunities · Updated October 2026

Explore current early career mechanical design engineer jobs in San Francisco. Filter by work mode, employment type, experience, department, date posted and distance.

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📍 San Francisco, California, United States· Full-time
✓ Quality checkedCompany trend -80.2%

About the Team The Intelligence and Investigations team seeks to rapidly identify and mitigate abuse and strategic risks to ensure a safe online ecosystem. We are dedicated to identifying emerging abuse trends, analyzing risks, and working with our internal and external partners to implement effective mitigation strategies to protect against misuse. Our efforts contribute to OpenAI's overarching goal of developing AI that benefits humanity. The Strategic Intelligence & Analysis (SIA) team provides safety intelligence for OpenAI’s products by monitoring, analyzing, and forecasting real-world abuse, geopolitical risks, and strategic threats. Our work informs safety mitigations, product decisions, and partnerships, ensuring OpenAI’s tools are deployed securely and responsibly across critical sectors. About the Role As a Quantitative Intelligence Analyst , you will focus on discovering novel and emerging risks in complex human–AI systems before they are well-defined, measurable, or widely understood. You will use deep subject matter expertise and quantitative tooling to surface weak, early, and unconventional risk signals. You will build analytic models that explain how harms could emerge and translate ambiguous patterns into structured, data-driven insight. Your work will help identify potential gaps in policy or coverage and operationalize previously unmeasured problems into signals that can support detection, mitigation, and planning downstream. You will develop analytical frameworks that map how new risks form, evolve, and propagate as products change, policies shift, and external events unfold. Your analyses will directly inform strategic risk prioritization and planning across the company, with regular visibility through strategic risk products. This role is based in office (hybrid, 3 days/week). Relocation support is available In this role, you will: Discover and define new quantitative risk signals where no established metrics exist, using subject matter exp

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📍 San Francisco, California, United States· Full-time
✓ Quality checkedCompany trend -80.2%

About the Team OpenAI’s Hardware organization develops AI-native silicon and system-level solutions for the unique demands of advanced AI workloads. Building on efforts like Jalapeño, the team is developing future generations of AI-native silicon and tightly integrated systems to power the next generation of frontier models. By co-designing chips, systems, tools, and methodologies, the team helps deliver faster, more efficient, and production-ready hardware for OpenAI’s supercomputing platform. About the Role We're seeking a Security Engineer to join our First-Party Hardware team. In this role, you will own the end-to-end security foundation for OpenAI's first-party AI hardware systems, working across hardware security, embedded security, system security, and practical deployment at data center scale. You will partner with silicon, hardware, firmware, infrastructure, manufacturing, operations, and security teams to define and deliver system-level device trust. This includes boot integrity, device identity, provisioning, attestation, management-plane security, storage encryption, debug controls, firmware update and recovery, RMA, and decommissioning. You will be accountable for turning threat models into requirements, requirements into implementation, and implementation into validation evidence that can support launch decisions. Location: San Francisco, CA (Hybrid: 3 days/week onsite) Relocation assistance available. In this role, you will: Own security requirements, threat models, validation strategy, and launch-readiness evidence for first-party hardware platforms from early design through production deployment. Design and review secure boot, measured boot, roots of trust, platform firmware resilience, firmware signing, recovery, and anti-rollback strategies across heterogeneous devices. Own device identity, provisioning, enrollment, attestation, certificate lifecycle, and key-management requirements across manufacturing and data center bring-up. Harden management

AWSRestAIC++
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📍 San Francisco, California, United States· Full-time
✓ Quality checkedCompany trend -80.2%

About the team OpenAI’s Forward Deployed Engineering team partners with customers to turn research breakthroughs into production systems. We operate at the intersection of customer delivery and core platform development. About the role Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs) lead complex end-to-end deployments of frontier models in production alongside our most strategic customers. You will own discovery, technical scoping, system design, build, and production rollout, partnering directly with customer engineering and domain teams. You will measure success through production adoption, measurable workflow impact, and eval-driven feedback that changes product and model roadmaps. You’ll work closely with our Product, Research, Partnerships, GRC, Security, and GTM teams. This role is based in San Francisco. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week. We offer relocation assistance. Travel up to 50% is required. In this role you will Own technical delivery across multiple deployments from first prototype to stable production Build full-stack systems that deliver customer value and sharpen how we learn Embed closely with customer teams, understand their needs, and guide adoption of what you build Scope work, sequence delivery, and remove blockers early Make trade-offs between scope, speed, and quality; adjust plans to protect delivery Contribute directly in the code when progress or clarity depends on it Codify working patterns into tools, playbooks, or building blocks that others can use Share field feedback that helps Research and Product understand where the models succeed and where they can improve Keep teams moving through clarity and follow-through You might thrive in this role if you Bring 5+ years of engineering or technical deployment experience that includes customer-facing work Have scoped and delivered complex systems in fast-moving or ambiguous environments Write and review production-grade code across frontend and backend using Python, JavaScript,

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📍 San Francisco, California, United States· Full-time
✓ Quality checkedCompany trend -80.2%

About The Team OpenAI Finance is responsible for ensuring the organization is set up for success in pursuit of its mission. The Technical Accounting team plays a crucial role in helping OpenAI navigate complex, judgmental, and rapidly evolving accounting matters with rigor and clarity. We aim to bring both technical excellence and strong business partnership to some of the most novel accounting questions in the industry. About The Role OpenAI seeks a Director, Technical Accounting, Revenue & Strategic Partnerships to set the technical revenue accounting strategy for the company's largest, most complex, and highest-risk commercial arrangements. This leader will personally assess novel fact patterns, establish and defend the accounting position, and shape deal structures before execution across enterprise contracts, strategic partnerships, API and consumption-based offerings, credits and incentives, revenue share, multi-party arrangements, and emerging product monetization models. This role will be the senior technical accounting partner to Revenue Accounting, Sales, Product, Legal, Tax, Strategic Finance, Business Development, Deal Desk, Billing, Financial Reporting, Internal Controls, and external auditors. The core mandate is technical judgment: independently synthesize the full contractual and economic substance, identify alternatives and second-order implications, resolve ambiguity under ASC 606 and related U.S. GAAP, and communicate a clear recommendation to executives and auditors. Operational know-how is essential to translate conclusions into billing, close, disclosures, systems, and controls, but process ownership is not the center of the role. In This Role, You Will Partner closely with Revenue Accounting, Sales, Product, Legal, Tax, Strategic Finance, Business Development, Deal Desk, Billing, Financial Reporting, and external auditors. Identify non-standard revenue arrangements early and evaluate them under ASC 606. Advise on thoughtful deal structurin

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📍 San Francisco, California, United States· Full-time
✓ Quality checkedCompany trend -80.2%

About the Team OpenAI, in close collaboration with our capital partners, is embarking on a journey to build the world’s most advanced AI infrastructure ecosystem. This team is central to this mission, setting the core infra strategy and implementing this vision. From site selection to the buildout process, this team sits at the intersection of commercial, technical, strategy, and operations, interacting with teams and executives inside and outside of OpenAI. About the Role We are seeking experienced Data Center Mechanical and Electrical/Power Design Engineers with expertise in designing, operating, and maintaining large-scale data center campuses. The ideal candidate for this role will have extensive background and experience in design and managing critical equipment and facilities, design and operation of MEP (Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing) systems, and overseeing operational activities from initial phases of Data Center build through delivery and ongoing maintenance. The ideal candidate will have a strong technical background, operational leadership experience, and a proven ability to collaborate with external vendors on critical infrastructure. This role offers the opportunity to lead transformative data center projects with high visibility and impact. If you are passionate about delivering cutting-edge infrastructure solutions, we encourage you to apply. Key Responsibilities Oversee building and MEP design, operation, and maintenance, including reviewing building and MEP drawings and proposals across all project phases. Lead operational activities for large-scale data center campuses, from early design phases through delivery and daily operation. Operate and maintain critical data center facilities and equipment, ensuring reliability and performance. Collaborate with external vendors to select, procure, and manage critical equipment, such as generators, UPS, chillers, and CDUs. Provide technical expertise on all aspects of data center building, equipment, and

AWSRestAIGo
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📍 San Francisco, California, United States· Full-time
✓ Quality checkedCompany trend -80.2%

About the Team: GTM Innovation is a product engineering team with a charter to automate 100% of digital knowledge work in OpenAI's GTM, so sellers spend more time directly with customers. AGI-level reasoning doesn’t mean organization-level transformation “just works” out of the box; orgs must be redesigned around abundant intelligence and persistent virtual coworkers. Our team builds and scales a fleet of virtual coworkers that operate as full-time members of the account team, and redefines how our human-first revenue organization interacts with their agentic teammates. About the Role We’re looking for backend software engineers with a product mindset to join the GTM Innovation team. You’ll help OpenAI meet the world at scale. You’ll partner closely with go-to-market teams to understand their workflows, identify leverage points, and ship novel solutions using OpenAI’s API platform. You’ll move quickly from prototype to production, and your work will directly shape how customers experience our technology in the field. This role is ideal for engineers who want to be close to users, own end-to-end outcomes, and help define entirely new categories of enterprise software. In this role, you will: Build high-impact applications and tools that accelerate OpenAI’s go-to-market efforts Work across the full product lifecycle for GTM: prototype, iterate, ship, and maintain Embed with Sales, Technical Success, and Revenue Operations to identify user needs and build for them Apply OpenAI’s models in novel ways to solve real-world customer and internal workflow problems Translate learnings into feedback for Applied and Research teams to inform product development You’ll thrive in this role if you: Have 4+ years of experience as a software/ML/product engineer working on user-facing systems Former founder, or early engineer at a startup who built a product from scratch is a plus Are fluent in Python or JavaScript and comfortable building full-stack applications Have built or prototy

JavaScriptPythonJavaAWS
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📍 San Francisco, California, United States· Full-time
✓ Quality checkedCompany trend -80.2%

About the Team: GTM Innovation is a product engineering team with a charter to automate 100% of digital knowledge work in OpenAI's GTM, so sellers spend more time directly with customers. AGI-level reasoning doesn’t mean organization-level transformation “just works” out of the box; orgs must be redesigned around abundant intelligence and persistent virtual coworkers. Our team builds and scales a fleet of virtual coworkers that operate as full-time members of the account team, and redefines how our human-first revenue organization interacts with their agentic teammates. About the Role We’re looking for product mindset software engineers to join the GTM Innovation team. As a product engineer on this team, you’ll help OpenAI meet the world at scale. You’ll partner closely with go-to-market teams to understand their workflows, identify leverage points, and ship novel solutions using OpenAI’s API platform. You’ll move quickly from prototype to production, and your work will directly shape how customers experience our technology in the field. This role is ideal for engineers who want to be close to users, own end-to-end outcomes, and help define entirely new categories of enterprise software. In this role, you will: Build high-impact applications and tools that accelerate OpenAI’s go-to-market efforts Work across the full product lifecycle for GTM: prototype, iterate, ship, and maintain Embed with Sales, Technical Success, and Revenue Operations to identify user needs and build for them Apply OpenAI’s models in novel ways to solve real-world customer and internal workflow problems Translate learnings into feedback for Applied and Research teams to inform product development You’ll thrive in this role if you: Have 4+ years of experience as a software/ML/product engineer working on user-facing systems Former founder, or early engineer at a startup who built a product from scratch is a plus Are fluent in Python or JavaScript and comfortable building full-stack applications

JavaScriptPythonJavaAWS
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📍 San Francisco, California, United States· Full-time
✓ Quality checkedCompany trend -80.2%

About the Team: GTM Innovation is a product engineering team with a charter to automate 100% of digital knowledge work in OpenAI's GTM, so sellers spend more time directly with customers. AGI-level reasoning doesn’t mean organization-level transformation “just works” out of the box; orgs must be redesigned around abundant intelligence and persistent virtual coworkers. Our team builds and scales a fleet of virtual coworkers that operate as full-time members of the account team, and redefines how our human-first revenue organization interacts with their agentic teammates. About the Role We’re looking for Full Stack software engineers with a product mindset to join the GTM Innovation team. As a product engineer on this team, you’ll help OpenAI meet the world at scale. You’ll partner closely with go-to-market teams to understand their workflows, identify leverage points, and ship novel solutions using OpenAI’s API platform. You’ll move quickly from prototype to production, and your work will directly shape how customers experience our technology in the field. This role is ideal for engineers who want to be close to users, own end-to-end outcomes, and help define entirely new categories of enterprise software. In this role, you will: Build high-impact applications and tools that accelerate OpenAI’s go-to-market efforts Work across the full product lifecycle for GTM: prototype, iterate, ship, and maintain Embed with Sales, Technical Success, and Revenue Operations to identify user needs and build for them Apply OpenAI’s models in novel ways to solve real-world customer and internal workflow problems Translate learnings into feedback for Applied and Research teams to inform product development You’ll thrive in this role if you: Have 4+ years of experience as a software/ML/product engineer working on user-facing systems Former founder, or early engineer at a startup who built a product from scratch is a plus Are fluent in Python or JavaScript and comfortable building full-s

JavaScriptPythonJavaAWS
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📍 San Francisco, California, United States· Full-time
✓ Quality checkedCompany trend -80.2%

About the Team Our Robotics team is focused on unlocking general-purpose robotics and pushing towards AGI-level intelligence in dynamic, real-world settings. Working across the entire model stack, we integrate cutting-edge hardware and software to explore a broad range of robotic form factors. We strive to seamlessly blend high-level AI capabilities with the constraints of physical systems to improve peoples' lives. About the Role You will work at the cutting edge of OpenAI's robotics hardware, partnering with hardware and software teams to develop, build, test, and iterate on robotic systems. Working closely with engineers, you will build prototypes, execute experiments, fabricate fixtures, troubleshoot hardware, and help drive rapid iteration on new robotic technologies. Your practical problem-solving and technical judgment will help move projects from concept to reality. We are looking for versatile, hands-on generalists who enjoy solving problems across mechanical, electrical, fabrication, and experimental domains. The ideal candidate will have strong experience in high-velocity and early-stage hardware development environments, provide thoughtful feedback to engineering teams, and help improve both hardware and development processes. This role will help accelerate robotics development by enabling fast, high-quality iteration on new hardware concepts and systems. This role is based in San Francisco, CA, and is in-person 5 days a week. In this role, you will: Partner closely with engineers, researchers, and other members of the robotics team to support prototype development, experimentation, and hardware iteration. Build, modify, troubleshoot, and repair robotic systems and electromechanical assemblies spanning structural, electrical, sensing, and actuation subsystems. Design and fabricate fixtures, adapters, test equipment, and other prototype hardware that accelerate development efforts. Execute low-volume builds, engineering changes, and rework activities acro

AWSLinuxRestAI
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📍 San Francisco, California, United States· Full-time
✓ Quality checkedCompany trend -80.2%

About the Team Our Robotics team is focused on unlocking general-purpose robotics and pushing towards AGI-level intelligence in dynamic, real-world settings. Working across the entire model stack, we integrate cutting-edge hardware and software to explore a broad range of robotic form factors. We strive to seamlessly blend high-level AI capabilities with the constraints of physical systems to improve peoples’ lives. About the Role We are seeking a Mechanical Engineer to lead the engineering, characterization, and productionization of flexible and compliant components in robotic platforms. You will partner closely with cross-functional teams to translate material concepts into engineered subsystems that meet functional, durability, and manufacturing requirements. This role focuses on understanding how soft materials behave in dynamic mechanical systems — including fatigue, creep, hysteresis, wear, and environmental degradation — and designing assemblies that perform consistently at scale. You will work with materials such as elastomers, foams, thermoplastic polyurethanes (TPUs), engineered fabrics, knitted and woven textiles, cables, and other flexible load-bearing or transmission elements, integrating them with rigid hardware, sensors, and actuators using fabrication methods such as bonding, molding, lamination, and sewn assemblies. This role is based in San Francisco, CA, and requires in-person presence 4 days a week. In this role, you will Design and integrate compliant or flexible materials into mechanical subsystems and rigid hardware interfaces. Leverage FEA tools to characterize material behavior under operational loads, including tension, compression, abrasion, fatigue, and environmental exposure. Develop test methods and validation protocols to evaluate durability, performance, and failure modes of soft components. Collaborate with cross-functional teams to transition early prototypes into manufacturable designs. Source and evaluate materials in collaboratio

AWSRestAIGo
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📍 San Francisco, California, United States· Full-time
✓ Quality checkedCompany trend -80.2%

About the Team OpenAI’s Hardware organization develops AI-native silicon and system-level solutions for the unique demands of advanced AI workloads. Building on efforts like Jalapeño, the team is developing future generations of AI-native silicon and tightly integrated systems to power the next generation of frontier models. By co-designing chips, systems, tools, and methodologies, the team helps deliver faster, more efficient, and production-ready hardware for OpenAI’s supercomputing platform. About the Role We are seeking a Operations Program Manager (OPM) to serve as the single-threaded operational leader for new hardware introductions (NPI) and production ramps across OpenAI’s AI infrastructure systems. This role combines hands-on execution with strategic ownership. You will be responsible for defining the operating model, aligning cross-functional stakeholders, setting the critical path, making informed tradeoffs, escalating decisively, and ensuring hardware programs deliver on schedule, quality, cost, and scalability. Success in this role requires comfort operating in ambiguity, influencing without authority, and driving alignment across internal teams and external partners—while keeping eyes firmly on long-term system scalability and repeatability. In this role, you will: Strategic & Leadership Ownership Act as the single-threaded owner for operational readiness across NPI and ramp, accountable for outcomes from early bring-up through sustained production Translate OpenAI’s infrastructure strategy and engineering objectives into clear operating plans, execution priorities, and decision frameworks Drive alignment across Engineering, Operations, Strategic Sourcing, Finance, Capacity Planning, and Executive stakeholders by framing tradeoffs, risks, and recommendations Proactively identify inflection points where decisions or investments are required to protect long-term scale, reliability, or cost targets Influence operational strategy with manufacturing par

AWSRestAIGo
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📍 San Francisco, California, United States· Full-time
✓ Quality checkedCompany trend -80.2%

About the Team The Preparedness team is an important part of the Safety Systems org at OpenAI, and is guided by OpenAI’s Preparedness Framework . Frontier AI models have the potential to benefit all of humanity, but also pose increasingly severe risks. To ensure that AI promotes positive change, the Preparedness team helps us prepare for the development of increasingly capable frontier AI models. This team is tasked with identifying, tracking, and preparing for catastrophic risks related to frontier AI models. The mission of the Preparedness team is to: Closely monitor and predict the evolving capabilities of frontier AI systems, with an eye towards misuse risks whose impact could be catastrophic to our society Ensure we have concrete procedures, infrastructure and partnerships to mitigate these risks and to safely handle the development of powerful AI systems Preparedness tightly connects capability assessment, evaluations, and internal red teaming, and mitigations for frontier models, as well as overall coordination on AGI preparedness. This is fast paced, exciting work that has far reaching importance for the company and for society. About the Role We’re hiring a Data Scientist to help build, evaluate, and continuously improve mitigations that prevent extreme harms from AI systems. This role is for an experienced, highly autonomous individual contributor who can take ambiguous problem statements, structure rigorous analyses, and translate findings into actionable product and policy changes. This position goes beyond “running evals.” You’ll help create mitigation intelligence and monitoring systems that enable OpenAI to detect issues early, measure effectiveness over time, and reduce both over-blocking (unnecessary friction) and under-blocking (missed harm). What You’ll Do Evaluate and improve mitigation systems, including classifiers and detection pipelines across domains (e.g., biosecurity, cybersecurity, and emerging risk areas). Diagnose false positives and fa

PythonSQLAWSRest
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📍 San Francisco, California, United States· Full-time
✓ Quality checkedCompany trend -80.2%

OpenAI’s charter calls on us to ensure the benefits of AI are distributed broadly and safely. Our Health AI team focuses on expanding access to high-quality medical expertise and aims to set a high standard for deploying AI responsibly in high-stakes domains. Improving health will be one of the defining impacts of AGI. Today, millions of people lack access to reliable medical information, and clinicians around the world face increasing time and resource constraints. We are building AI systems that support patients, clinicians, and health workers, while meeting the highest standards for safety, reliability, and privacy. We are seeking full stack software engineers to help build and scale products used by consumers and care providers globally. You will work closely with product, design, and research teams to ship real systems in a fast-moving, high-impact environment. In this role, you will: Design and build scalable fullstack systems for consumer and enterprise health. Own end-to-end feature development—from early design and implementation through deployment, monitoring, and iteration. Build and maintain data pipelines and services that meet strict privacy, security, and compliance requirements (e.g., HIPAA). Collaborate closely with researchers and safety teams to integrate reliability, evaluation, and guardrails into production systems. Debug, optimize, and harden systems to support high availability, performance, and global scale. Take ownership of ambiguous problems and drive them to practical, high-quality solutions. You might thrive in this role if you: Are deeply motivated by improving health outcomes and expanding access to medical expertise. Are a strong engineer who enjoys building durable, well-designed systems. Have 5+ years of experience writing maintainable, production-quality code. Can operate with high agency—owning problems end-to-end with minimal supervision. Enjoy working in fast-moving, cross-functional teams with engineers, product managers, desi

AWSGitRestAI
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📍 San Francisco, California, United States· Full-time
✓ Quality checkedCompany trend -80.2%

About the team The Intelligence and Investigations team seeks to rapidly identify and mitigate abuse and strategic risks to ensure a safe online ecosystem in close collaboration with our internal and external partners. Our efforts contribute to OpenAI's overarching goal of developing AI that benefits humanity. This role focuses specifically on AI Safety: understanding and mitigating risks created or amplified by increasingly capable AI systems. It is not a cybersecurity, information security, or corporate security role. The Strategic Intelligence & Analysis (SIA) team provides safety intelligence for OpenAI’s products by monitoring, analyzing, and forecasting real-world abuse, geopolitical risks, and strategic threats. Our work informs AI safety mitigations, product decisions, and partnerships, ensuring OpenAI’s tools are deployed responsibly across critical sectors. About the role We are looking for a Frontier AI Risks Lead to help us understand potential harms and misuse of AI in a time of rapid, sustained change. We seek to understand how developments in AI could intersect with misuse and abuse, accelerating existing harm areas and creating novel risks. We seek to scan available signals and use strategic foresight methodologies to enable proactive detection and mitigation of frontier AI risks. This is an AI safety role focused on frontier and systemic risks, including model misalignment, recursive self-improvement (RSI), multi-agent interaction, loss of control, runaway agents, and related emerging failure modes. In this role, you will help provide a strategic-level perspective on a range of frontier AI safety areas, producing actionable understanding of issues relevant to OpenAI’s platforms, systems, and broader mission. Utilizing mixed quantitative and qualitative methodologies, you will spot early warning signs, pull threads on potentially concerning behavior, and turn weak signals into clear, prioritized risk calls. You will focus on upstream ecosystem sc

AWSRestAIGo
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📍 San Francisco, California, United States· Full-time
✓ High-confidence listingCompany trend -86%

$140K – $205K/yr

Quick readStrong listing-quality and freshness signals

Who We Are Notion is the collaborative AI workspace where teams and agents think together . We're building one place where your knowledge, projects, meetings, and AI tools live side by side, so work is faster, clearer, and less fragmented. Millions of individuals, small teams, and large companies run their work on Notion. Notinos (our employees) are customer zero in bringing this future of work to life. We care about craft, building things that last, and the belief that great work is still fundamentally human. Our goal isn’t to ship the next feature. Each and every team of Notinos is working to set the standard for how humans work together in the AI era. From building a business’s system of record to making and managing AI agents to automating away the busy work, we care deeply about giving our customers more time for their life’s work. About Us: Notion helps you build beautiful tools for your life’s work. In today's world of endless apps and tabs, Notion provides one place for teams to get everything done, seamlessly connecting docs, notes, projects, calendar, and email—with AI built in to find answers and automate work. Millions of users, from individuals to large organizations like Toyota, Figma, and OpenAI, love Notion for its flexibility and choose it because it helps them save time and money. In-person collaboration is essential to Notion's culture. We require all team members to work from our offices on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, our designated Anchor Days. Certain teams or positions may require additional in-office workdays. About the Role: The Startup Program & Experience Lead owns the startup customer journey during the onboarding and trial experience, helping startups successfully adopt Notion, engage with the platform, and realize value early in their journey. Working closely with the Head of Startups, this role combines program management, customer experience, lifecycle engagement and operational execution to improve startup activation, engag

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