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Hardware Lead Engineer in San Francisco

184 active opportunities · Updated October 2026

Explore current hardware lead 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· Remote
✓ High-confidence listingCompany trend -82%
Quick readStrong listing-quality and freshness signals

About the Team Like every team at OpenAI, the Marketing team contributes to our broader mission of ensuring responsible and widespread adoption of artificial intelligence With that aim in mind, we are responsible for developing and executing strategies that drive awareness, engagement, and usage for OpenAI’s products and platform amongst our core audiences. We take a data-driven approach to understand our customers' needs and challenges, ensuring that their voices are reflected in product development and messaging. We then partner closely with Product, Engineering, Research, Comms, and Design teams to create a cohesive customer experience across all our channels. Our focus extends beyond just promoting product features; we aim to provide valuable insights and resources that help our users make the most out of AI technologies. About the Role As a Product Marketing Manager for Partner Marketing on the Hardware team, you will help shape the partnership strategy for a new product ecosystem and bring that ecosystem to market with the right partners, programs, and commercial motions. This role calls for a strategic, relationship-oriented marketer who can identify high-potential partners, understand their priorities, and turn shared opportunities into durable, high-impact go-to-market plans. You will work closely with Product, Design, Engineering, Integrated Marketing, Sales, Comms, Finance, Legal, and partner-facing teams to define how first-, second-, and third-party partners participate in our hardware ecosystem. You will lead the marketing and commercial aspects of partnerships, support joint launches, and ensure partner needs are understood internally while OpenAI’s product, brand, and customer experience standards are represented externally. This role reports into the VP of Product Marketing, Hardware, and offers a unique opportunity to build the partner marketing foundation for a new category of AI-powered devices. In this role, you will: Help craft and implement th

AWSRestAIGo
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📍 San Francisco, California, United States· Full-time· Remote
✓ Quality checkedCompany trend -82%

About Team Our Robotics team is focused on unlocking general-purpose robotics and advancing toward AGI-level intelligence in dynamic, real-world environments. Working across the full model and systems 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 physical constraints of real-world systems to improve people’s lives. About the Role We are looking for a Technical Program Manager to own actuator development and integration from system goals through production readiness. The actuator program spans mechanical, electrical, firmware, harnessing, controls, test, reliability, manufacturing, and supply chain, and needs a TPM who can turn cross-functional decisions into clear scope, executable milestones, and timely decisions. In this role, you will help the team converge on the right technical plan, surface risks early, and deliver reliable actuator systems on schedule. This role is based in San Francisco, CA and requires in-person presence 4 days a week. In this role you will: Drive actuator programs end-to-end, aligning scope, milestones, interfaces, dependencies, and exit criteria across engineering teams. Drive scope lock and technical convergence for sprints, MVPs, and stretch goals while connecting component decisions to system performance. Coordinate actuator development across motors, gears, sensing, electronics, and firmware, and align the electrical and mechanical interfaces that connect actuators to the broader robot. Lead validation planning from early prototypes through engineering validation, reliability testing, and production readiness. Drive tradeoff decisions across cost, quality, performance, schedule, and lead time by collaborating cross-functionally and quantifying impact to meet program deliverables. Establish effective mechanisms for technical reviews, change control, design releases, decision tracking, and manufacturing readiness.

AWSRestAIGo
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📍 San Francisco, California, United States· Full-time· Remote
✓ High-confidence listingCompany trend -82%
Quick readStrong listing-quality and freshness signals

About the Team OpenAI’s mission is to ensure that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. The Design Systems team creates the foundations that help teams across OpenAI build coherent, high-quality experiences at scale. Accessibility is fundamental to that work. We’re building the shared standards, components, tools, and practices that make inclusive experiences the default across OpenAI’s products and platforms. About the Role In this role, you’ll lead OpenAI’s company-wide accessibility program from within Design Foundations. You’ll pair strategy and organizational influence with hands-on product design—advocating for disabled people, removing barriers across complete customer journeys, and establishing durable ownership throughout the company. This is an opportunity to define accessibility for a new generation of products spanning web, mobile, desktop, voice, AI, and hardware. You’ll help teams consider the many ways people perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with technology, going beyond minimum compliance to create experiences that are genuinely useful and inclusive. Working across design, engineering, research, product, go-to-market, and legal, you’ll make accessibility an expected part of product quality—not a final review or the responsibility of a single expert. This role is based in our San Francisco HQ. We offer relocation assistance to new employees. In this role you will: Define OpenAI’s accessibility strategy, roadmap, governance, priorities, and measures of progress. Design and ship accessible experiences while identifying systemic barriers across complete customer journeys. Build accessibility into our design system through inclusive components, tokens, interaction patterns, Figma libraries, documentation, and engineering guardrails. Center disabled people through participatory research, usability studies, and assistive-technology testing rather than relying solely on assumptions, simulations, or automated tools. Des

AWSRestAIGo
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📍 San Francisco, California, United States· Full-time
✓ Quality checkedCompany trend -82%

About the Team OpenAI is helping build the infrastructure that powers the next generation of artificial intelligence. Through Stargate, we are developing and operating large-scale AI compute campuses that require world-class execution across data center design, construction, commissioning, and operations. The Infrastructure Operations team is responsible for bringing AI infrastructure online and ensuring it operates reliably at scale. We partner closely with hardware, network, deployment, construction, and operations teams to deliver mission-critical environments capable of supporting frontier AI workloads. As our footprint expands, operational excellence becomes increasingly important to ensuring safe, reliable, and efficient campus operations. About the Role We are seeking a Facilities Operations Manager to support the commissioning, operational readiness, and long-term operation of next-generation AI data center campuses. This role sits at the intersection of construction, commissioning, hardware deployment, and facilities operations. You will be responsible for ensuring mission-critical infrastructure is prepared to support hardware deployment, transitioned successfully into production operations, and maintained to the highest standards of reliability and availability. You will lead day-to-day operational execution across electrical, mechanical, controls, and supporting infrastructure systems while partnering closely with commissioning teams, site operators, vendors, and engineering organizations. This role requires a strong blend of technical depth, operational leadership, and cross-functional execution. Key Responsibilities Lead day-to-day operations of mission-critical facility infrastructure across AI compute campuses. Own operational readiness activities supporting new campus deployments and infrastructure expansion. Partner with commissioning teams to transition facilities from construction and startup into steady-state operations. Develop, implement, and

AWSRestAIRust
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📍 San Francisco, California, United States· Full-time
✓ Quality checkedCompany trend -82%

About the Team OpenAI’s Infrastructure organization builds the systems that power frontier AI workloads at global scale. As compute demand accelerates, our ability to rapidly convert infrastructure investments into usable production capacity has become mission critical. The CPU / Storage / PoP / WAN team is responsible for the end-to-end infrastructure layers required to bring compute online: server and cluster activation, storage platforms, Points of Presence (PoPs), backbone connectivity, and global network expansion. We operate across first-party facilities, colocation environments, and strategic cloud partners to ensure OpenAI can scale reliably and quickly. About the Role We are seeking a highly technical Program Manager to lead execution across CPU, Storage, PoP, and WAN infrastructure programs that directly unlock OpenAI’s next generation compute capacity. In this role, you will own complex cross-functional programs spanning compute cluster activation, storage deployment, PoP bring-up, and backbone expansion. You will coordinate hardware readiness, site readiness, network pathing, storage availability, vendor execution, and engineering dependencies required to turn contracted infrastructure into live training and inference capacity. This role requires strong technical fluency across hardware systems, network infrastructure, storage architecture, and deployment execution. You should be comfortable operating from rack-level implementation details through executive-level capacity planning discussions. This role is based in San Francisco, CA, with travel as needed. Key Responsibilities Lead end-to-end execution of CPU / GPU cluster activation programs across OpenAI’s global infrastructure footprint Drive readiness to convert contracted compute capacity into schedulable production clusters Own deployment programs for new PoPs, backbone nodes, WAN expansion, and interconnection initiatives Build integrated schedules spanning procurement, logistics, installation, st

AWSAzureRestAI
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📍 San Francisco, California, United States· Full-time
✓ Quality checkedCompany trend -82%

About the Team OpenAI’s Central Procurement – Hardware Operations team is building scalable, AI-enabled operating foundations for a rapidly growing hardware footprint. We help the business move quickly while maintaining the data quality and controls needed to manage financial and operational risk responsibly. As OpenAI scales across R&D, new-product introduction, manufacturing, and third-party custody models, we are building the foundations to absorb complexity without adding unnecessary friction. That means establishing practical standards, strengthening discipline where it matters, using AI thoughtfully, and continuously improving how teams manage hardware operations. About the Role We are hiring an Asset Compliance Program Lead to establish the cross-business framework that gives OpenAI reliable lifecycle visibility over hardware-related financial assets and capital equipment. You will define the controls, systems roadmap, and evidence practices needed to manage those assets within OpenAI’s financial-control scope. This is a senior individual-contributor role in Central Procurement – Hardware Operations within Finance. Distinct from sourcing and transaction execution, you will partner with hardware business units, Accounting, Financial Risk Management, Procurement, contract manufacturers, and other third-party custodians to deploy practical operating mechanisms. These mechanisms will connect how assets are purchased, built, received, moved, held, verified, and retired with the ownership, data, reporting, and evidence needed for financial governance. The role covers those assets regardless of location or custody, including manufacturing equipment and tooling, supplier- and contract-manufacturer-held assets, leased assets, and other third-party-held equipment. You will stay close to the operational details—how assets move, where records diverge, which controls are not working, and where evidence is incomplete—and use that view to strengthen processes, accountab

AWSRestAIGo
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📍 San Francisco, California, United States· Full-time· Remote
✓ High-confidence listingCompany trend -82%
Quick readStrong listing-quality and freshness signals

About the Team The Marketing team helps OpenAI bring products, research, and company priorities to the world with clarity, creativity, and impact. We partner across Product, Research, Design, Creative, Communications, Finance, Legal, and Go-to-Market teams to translate complex technology into work that people can understand, trust, and use. Marketing Strategy & Operations builds the operating systems that help this work move with focus and speed. We connect priorities to plans, plans to resourcing, and resourcing to execution, so teams can make better decisions earlier and stay aligned as priorities evolve. About the Role We’re looking for a Strategy & Operations Lead, Hardware Marketing to help build and run the operating system for OpenAI’s Hardware Marketing work. This role will partner closely with Hardware Marketing leadership, Product Marketing, Product, Design, Creative, Production, Communications, Finance, Legal, and external partners to bring structure to a fast-moving, highly cross-functional product area. You will help the team clarify priorities, build plans, manage intake, track decisions, surface risks, frame tradeoffs, and keep critical workstreams moving from planning through operating readiness. This is a strong fit for someone who can operate independently in ambiguity, build practical systems from scratch, and move fluidly between strategy and execution. Experience with complex product launches or sensitive, cross-functional product areas is preferred. This role is based in San Francisco. We use a hybrid work model of three days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees. In this role, you will: Build and run the core operating rhythm for Hardware Marketing, including planning cycles, planning reviews, weekly priorities, decision forums, risk tracking, and leadership-ready updates. Partner with Hardware Marketing leadership to translate business and product priorities into clear workstreams, owners, milestones,

ReactAWSRestAI
O
📍 San Francisco, California, United States· Full-time
✓ High-confidence listingCompany trend -82%

$342K – $445K/yr

Quick readStrong listing-quality and freshness signals

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 Technical Lead to lead deployment and operations for OpenAI’s Silicon & Systems team. This person will become the Directly-Responsible Individual responsible for bringing OpenAI’s custom silicon and associated systems into data center environments, ensuring successful deployment, bring-up, validation, operational readiness, and ongoing reliability at scale. This role sits at the intersection of silicon, systems, infrastructure, data center operations, and software. You will lead a team focused on taking new hardware platforms from lab validation into production data center deployment. You will be responsible for building the operational processes, technical workflows, tooling, and cross-functional alignment required to deploy and operate custom AI hardware reliably in OpenAI’s supercomputing infrastructure. The ideal candidate is both a strong leader and a deeply technical operator. You should be comfortable staying close to the technical details of hardware bring-up, fleet deployment, debugging, system validation, data center integration, and production operations. This role requires strong execution, excellent cross-functional judgment, and the ability to drive clarity in ambiguous, fast-moving environments. In this role, you will: Lead a team responsible for deployment and operations of OpenAI’s custom silicon and systems in data center environments Own the path from hardware bring-up and validation through production deployment, operati

AWSRestAIGo
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📍 San Francisco, California, United States· Full-time
✓ Quality checkedCompany trend -82%

About the Team OpenAI’s Hardware organization develops system and infrastructure solutions designed for the unique demands of advanced AI workloads. We work closely with research, software, and external hardware partners to shape the next generation of AI systems, from silicon through full-scale deployments. Our team focuses on understanding and optimizing performance across the full system stack—ensuring that architectural decisions are grounded in rigorous, quantitative analysis of real-world workloads. About the Role We are seeking a Performance Modeling Lead to build and lead a small, high-impact team responsible for answering forward-looking architectural questions across AI infrastructure systems. You will develop modeling frameworks and methodologies to evaluate system-level tradeoffs and guide key design decisions. Your work will directly influence reference architectures, vendor designs, and long-term infrastructure strategy. This role sits at the intersection of AI workloads, system architecture, and quantitative modeling, and requires strong technical judgment, ownership, and the ability to translate complex analysis into clear, actionable guidance. 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. Key Responsibilities Build and own a performance modeling framework/toolchain to evaluate AI systems across multiple levels of abstraction. Analyze and quantify architectural tradeoffs across compute, memory, networking, storage, and system topology. Develop performance models to guide decisions on: scale-up vs. scale-out architectures interconnect and network design memory hierarchy and system balance. Translate modeling outputs into clear recommendations for internal teams and external hardware vendors. Influence reference designs and vendor roadmaps through data-driven insights. Partner closely with machine learning, systems, and hardware teams to understand workload characte

AWSRestMachine LearningAI
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📍 San Francisco, California, United States· Full-time
✓ Quality checkedCompany trend -100%

What you’ll do Own day-to-day operations for the scanner program and scanner builds in the spa: purchasing/procurement, vendor management, receiving, inventory, and logistics. Stand up lightweight production operations as we move from prototypes to repeatable builds: build planning, kitting, work instructions, and readiness checklists. Partner with Quality to ensure the operational system supports compliance: traceability, document control, training records, NCR/CAPA workflows, and audit readiness. Drive cross-functional execution for the physical spa build-out and scanner integration: schedules, dependencies, risk register, and weekly coordination with vendors and internal teams. Own the “integration glue” across facilities + device ops: commissioning plans, acceptance criteria, and operational handoff (runbooks, maintenance, spares, escalation paths). Build and track operational metrics: cost, budget, lead times, vendor performance, build throughput, and reliability of critical subsystems. Audit of import/export documentation, management of contract renewals, regulatory compliance. What we’re looking for Proven operations leadership in hardware/medical/robotics (or similarly complex electromechanical products), including procurement and vendor management. Strong program management instincts: can run schedules, unblock cross-functional dependencies, and keep priorities clear under ambiguity. Comfort operating in quality/regulatory environments and building processes that are rigorous without slowing a small team. High ownership and bias to action: can jump between spreadsheets, docks, and the lab/site to keep the program moving. Useful experience Experience running prototype-to-production transitions (NPI, EVT/DVT/PVT-style builds, CM/EMS collaboration). Facilities / construction operations experience (GC coordination, MEP commissioning, site readiness). Familiarity with inventory systems and procurement tooling (even “simple but disciplined”).

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📍 San Francisco, California, United States· Full-time
✓ Quality checkedCompany trend -82%

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. The Infrastructure team is central to this mission, setting the core strategy and implementing the vision. From site selection to deployment to operations, this team sits at the intersection of commercial, technical, and operational domains, interacting with experts and executives inside and outside of OpenAI. We design and operate mission-critical facilities that support cutting-edge AI workloads at scale. About the Role We are seeking a Facilities Operations Lead to support the commissioning, deployment, and long-term operation of our next-generation AI data centers. This role bridges the interface between data center construction and hardware landing, ensuring seamless integration of mission-critical infrastructure with hardware deployment timelines. You will define and execute commissioning plans, support infrastructure bring-up, and take ownership of operations and maintenance for cutting-edge, large-scale, AI data centers. You will collaborate closely with design, construction, and hardware teams to define repeatable processes for new data center builds and lead hands-on operations to uphold the performance and reliability of our deployed infrastructure. Key Responsibilities Define and execute sequences of operations, commissioning steps, and bring-up processes for mission-critical data center facilities. Interface with the design and hardware teams to define deployment procedures tailored to each data center and hardware configuration. Oversee installation, commissioning, and operational readiness of large-scale data center campuses. Manage monitoring, maintenance, and quality control of the data center infrastructure, including high-performance liquid cooling systems. Develop on-site operations staffing strategy. Develop and enforce procedures for planed and unplanned downtime and SLAs for critical

AWSRestAIRust
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📍 San Francisco, California, United States· Full-time
✓ Quality checkedCompany trend -82%

About the Team OpenAI's Legal team plays a crucial role in furthering OpenAI's mission by tackling innovative, fundamental legal issues in AI. If you're passionate about doing significant and unique work as a technology lawyer, this team is for you. The team comprises legal professionals from diverse fields, including technology, privacy, IP, corporate, cybersecurity, employment, tax, regulatory, and litigation. About the Role We’re growing our world-class Legal team and seek an experienced counsel to lead our global hardware IP portfolio initiatives, including patent, trademark and other intellectual property matters related to our business. This role is highly cross-functional across OpenAI, including work across our Legal, Communications, Global Affairs, Product, Research and Executive teams. 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: Own global hardware IP initiatives, including setting and executing on the strategic direction and management of our hardware IP portfolio. Create scalable processes internally and externally with outside counsel to build, maintain and protect our hardware IP portfolio. Developing and maintaining internal hardware IP policies and programs. Engaging externally on hardware IP policy issues. Advising on strategic hardware IP deals. Advising on hardware IP issues, ranging from patent, trademark, trade secret to open source. Developing and building internal AI expertise, processes and tools to facilitate legal team work. Experience advising on complex technology transactions and inbound technology licensing. You might thrive in this role if you: Have at least 10+ years of combined hardware IP experience at innovative technology companies and law firms. Have a JD and license or qualification to practice in CA. Have a strong sense of ownership, are inquisitive and enthusiastic about technology, enjoy being con

AWSRestAIRust
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📍 San Francisco, California, United States· Full-time
✓ Quality checkedCompany trend -82%

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 As an AI Accelerator Systems Software Technical Program manager at OpenAI, you will help bring our chips/system hardware roadmap to life, navigating an array of technical and partnership challenges. We’re looking for people excited to push the frontiers of computing by navigating technical explorations and are passionate about building. 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: Manage the end-to-end software development from design to implementation for our AI acceleration systems, working across technical, cross-functional and external stakeholders Lead planning and scheduling of AI system software designs with our strategic partners and vendors Coordinate and lead internal resources and communication for efficient interaction with partners and vendors. You might thrive in this role if you: Have experience as a software technical program manager for data center system products (server, GPU, TPU, networking, storage and so on) taking products from concept to volume in a data center environment ensuring the systems scale with high quality Know end-to-end software development program management techniques from concept, design, production, deployment into the data center Want to help design some of the world’s largest supercomputing systems, working at the edge of complex hardware challenges Enjoy working with and enabling world-clas

AWSRestAIGo
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📍 San Francisco, California, United States· Full-time· Remote
✓ High-confidence listingCompany trend -82%
Quick readStrong listing-quality and freshness signals

About the Role OpenAI’s Applications organization spans rapidly growing Consumer, Enterprise, Developer, and Hardware businesses. As we scale across EMEA, APAC, and LATAM, we’re building the financial and operating model that will help our regional teams make faster, better decisions. We are hiring a senior Strategic Finance partner to help shape that work. You’ll serve as a trusted advisor to regional GMs, connecting market strategy with business performance and guiding where and how we invest. By bringing together insights across growth, revenue, OpEx, headcount, and marketing effectiveness, you’ll help leaders understand market health, set priorities, and drive measurable outcomes. You’ll create the frameworks, operating rhythms, and decision processes needed to scale our international business, while contributing to broader Strategic Finance priorities across Marketing. This role is based in our San Francisco HQ. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees. Periodic international travel is expected. In this role, you will: Own an integrated view of OpenAI’s international performance—spanning countries, regions, and Consumer, Enterprise/API, and Developer businesses—to guide growth, resource allocation, and investment decisions. Partner with regional GMs and functional leaders to shape country strategies spanning Product, Sales, Growth and Brand Marketing, Partnerships, Communications, and Policy. Lead regional financial planning and forecasting, tracking budgets, headcount, capacity, investments, and risks against the company plan. Build and operationalize investment frameworks across markets, channels, and programs, evaluating expected returns, opportunity costs, and tradeoffs to recommend what to fund and when. Create regional and country scorecards and lead regular business reviews that track key metrics, surface risks, drive decisions, and ensure follow-through. Design decision rights and escal

SQLAWSRestAI
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📍 San Francisco, California, United States
✓ Quality checkedCompany trend -95.5%

Employee Applicant Privacy Notice Who we are: Shape a brighter financial future with us. Together with our members, we’re changing the way people think about and interact with personal finance. We’re a next-generation financial services company and national bank using innovative, mobile-first technology to help our millions of members reach their goals. The industry is going through an unprecedented transformation, and we’re at the forefront. We’re proud to come to work every day knowing that what we do has a direct impact on people’s lives, with our core values guiding us every step of the way. Join us to invest in yourself, your career, and the financial world. The role We are seeking a Director of Digital Employee Experience to lead the strategy and execution of a modern, intuitive, and measurable digital workplace experience for our employees. This leader will own the strategy and technology experience for how employees access the tools, information, services, and support they need to do their best work. The ideal candidate is a systems thinker and cross-functional operator who can connect business needs, employee insights, technology capabilities, service design, and change management. This role will partner closely with IT, People/HR, Security, Workplace, Communications, and business leaders to simplify employee journeys, increase technology adoption, and reduce friction across the digital workplace. What you’ll do Develop and own the employee digital experience vision, strategy, roadmap, and operating model. Drive SoFi’s “Make Work Easier” strategy by identifying and reducing friction across the digital employee experience, making it simpler for employees to find information, access support, and get work done. Map and improve priority employee journeys, including onboarding, internal mobility, hardware/software access, IT and HR support, knowledge discovery, collaboration, and hybrid work experiences. Partner with service owners across IT, HR, Facilities, Sec

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