Jobs in United States

Lead Director in San Francisco

564 active opportunities · Updated October 2026

Explore current lead director jobs in San Francisco. Filter by work mode, employment type, experience, department, date posted and distance.

Hiring demand

36/100

watch · 9 related jobs

Remote options

22.2%

Share of matching jobs listed as remote

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

About the Team OpenAI, in partnership with our capital and technology partners, is building a global network of advanced datacenters to support the most demanding AI workloads. The Industrial Compute team ensures that all datacenter systems are manufactured, delivered, and commissioned to the highest standards of quality, reliability, and performance. We work closely with manufacturing partners, engineering teams, and operations staff to ensure that every component is delivered ready for installation, startup, and long-term service. About the Role We are seeking an experienced Quality Engineer (QE) to drive Product and Site Quality initiatives across OpenAI’s infrastructure ecosystem. In this role, you will establish, implement, and manage a comprehensive, quality-focused program across our global supply chain network, ensuring excellence from design through deployment. You will be responsible for end-to-end quality of finished products, as well as maintaining and elevating manufacturing site quality standards. Working cross-functionally with Design (NPI) and Engineering teams, you will help achieve First Pass Yield (FPY), quality, and reliability targets. This includes leading site and fixture validation efforts, driving yield improvement initiatives (Yield Bridge, CPI), and implementing robust corrective and preventive actions (CAPA) to resolve issues at their root cause. In addition, you will play a key role in supplier quality management, assessing and qualifying new vendors, overseeing ongoing supplier performance, and ensuring readiness for future business awards. You will lead vendor audits, monitor key performance metrics, and coordinate corrective actions to ensure predictable delivery schedules, reduced operational risk, and high system reliability. By partnering closely with external suppliers and internal Engineering and Operations stakeholders, you will help ensure OpenAI’s datacenter infrastructure is delivered on time, meets the highest quality standa

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

About the team The Applied AI Engineering team is responsible for ensuring the safe and effective deployment of Generative AI applications for developers and startups. We act as a trusted advisor and thought partner for our customers, working to build an effective backlog of GenAI use cases for their industry and drive them to production through strong technical guidance. OpenAI's customers represent a range of diverse backgrounds and maturity, from early-stage startups to late-stage startups. About the Role We are seeking a technically proficient, business-minded Applied AI Engineer to help push the frontier of advanced AI with our strategic startup customers. You'll work with some of the most exciting AI startups in the world, guiding them through ideation, development, delivery, and scaling to accelerate and maximize the value of what they build on our platform. You will have the opportunity to work on the most novel and creative use cases being built on our API, serving as a critical partner in collecting and delivering high-fidelity product and model feedback internally. You will collaborate closely with Sales, Solutions Engineering, Applied Research, and Product teams, and you will report to the Startups Applied AI Lead. This role is based in our San Francisco or New York offices. 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: Partner closely with strategic startup customers as their technical thought partner to build novel applications on our API, helping them rapidly move from ideation to scale. Provide proactive guidance to maximize business impact and accelerate application development. Experiment and prototype alongside customers, demonstrating practical use cases. Contribute to open-source resources and scale the function by sharing knowledge, codifying best practices, and publishing useful resources. Synthesize and deliver valuable feedback to the Product and Research

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

About the Team OpenAI is building the infrastructure foundation for the next generation of AI. The Data Center Engineering team defines the strategy, reference architectures, technical requirements, and delivery standards for the large-scale data centers that support OpenAI research, products, and infrastructure partners. As a Data Center Infrastructure Electrical Engineer, you will help define, validate, and scale the electrical power systems that support high-density AI compute. You will translate evolving compute requirements into practical facility and rack-power architectures, evaluate new technologies and vendor solutions, and drive technical decisions across design, manufacturing validation, construction, commissioning, deployment, and operations. This role is best suited for a senior hands-on engineer with deep experience in mission-critical power systems, strong judgment under ambiguity, and the ability to connect facility infrastructure, hardware requirements, controls, telemetry, reliability, and operations. About the Role We are seeking a senior electrical infrastructure engineer to lead the development of reliable, scalable, and efficient power architectures for high-density, liquid-cooled AI data centers. The ideal candidate has strong practical experience with critical electrical systems at data centers or comparable industrial scale, including medium-voltage and low-voltage distribution, utility interfaces, backup power, UPS and battery systems, rack power delivery, grounding, protection, controls, and monitoring systems. You should be comfortable moving between long-range architecture, detailed engineering review, lab validation, vendor qualification, field deployment, and operational troubleshooting. Key Responsibilities Design and optimize electrical topologies and equipment strategies that reduce cost, accelerate schedules, improve efficiency, increase scalability, and maintain high reliability and maintainability. Review and develop basis-of-des

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

About the Team We bring OpenAI's technology to the world through products like ChatGPT and the OpenAI API. We seek to learn from deployment and distribute the benefits of AI, while ensuring that this powerful tool is used responsibly and safely. Safety is more important to us than unfettered growth. About the Role OpenAI is looking for an experienced Performance Engineer to help us scale the performance, reliability, and efficiency of our systems. In this role, you'll apply deep technical expertise to optimize infrastructure and application-level performance across mission-critical products like ChatGPT and our developer API. You’ll work cross-functionally with teams building core services, training models, and developing real-time user experiences to push our latency, throughput, and cost-efficiency to the next level. We are looking for engineers who thrive in ambiguous environments, value deep systems understanding, and are motivated by delivering measurable impact. This is a highly technical, individual contributor role focused on root-cause analysis, profiling, instrumentation, and architecture-level performance improvements across our stack. In this role, you will: Analyze and optimize performance across application, middleware, runtime, and infrastructure layers—networking, storage, Python runtime, GPU utilization, and beyond. Develop tooling and metrics that provide deep observability into system performance. Collaborate closely with infra, platform, training, and product teams to identify key performance goals and drive systemic improvements. Influence architecture and design decisions to prioritize latency, throughput, and efficiency at scale. Lead investigations into high-impact performance regressions or scalability issues in production. Drive performance testing strategies and help define SLAs/SLOs around latency and throughput for critical systems. You might thrive in this role if you: Have 7+ years of experience in software engineering with a strong tr

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

About the Team OpenAI's Industrial Compute organization is building the world's most advanced AI infrastructure ecosystem. Working alongside leading cloud providers, engineering firms, construction partners, utilities, and equipment manufacturers, we are delivering hyperscale AI campuses that enable the next generation of frontier AI models. The Strategic Sourcing team develops and executes the commercial strategies that ensure our infrastructure programs have reliable access to the equipment, materials, and strategic partners needed to deliver at unprecedented scale. We partner closely with Infrastructure Delivery, Capacity Planning, Design Engineering, Hardware Operations, Finance, Legal, and our external suppliers to build a resilient global supply network capable of supporting Industrial Compute's long-term growth. As we continue expanding globally, strategic sourcing becomes a critical competitive advantage, ensuring our infrastructure programs remain cost-effective, resilient, and capable of executing against aggressive deployment timelines. About the Role We are seeking a Strategic Sourcing Manager, Data Center Infrastructure to lead sourcing strategy for the critical infrastructure systems that power Industrial Compute campuses. This role will develop commercial strategies, negotiate strategic supplier agreements, and manage relationships across engineering, construction, manufacturing, and infrastructure partners responsible for delivering mission-critical facilities. You will work closely with Infrastructure Delivery, Capacity Planning, Engineering, Finance, Construction, and external suppliers to ensure Industrial Compute has the capacity, supplier relationships, and commercial frameworks required to support rapid global expansion. The ideal candidate has experience sourcing major infrastructure systems for hyperscale data centers, mission-critical facilities, industrial construction, semiconductor manufacturing, energy infrastructure, or similarly comple

AWSRestAIGo
O
📍 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're seeking talented Robotics Software Engineers to expand our robotics data collection and evaluation program. This highly technical role involves designing, implementing, and optimizing software solutions across diverse robotics hardware. You'll work closely and collaboratively with multidisciplinary teams; including software, hardware, research, and operations - to drive advancements in our robotic systems. This role is based in San Francisco, CA, and requires in-person 4 days a week. In this role, you will: Help develop and grow our data collection labs, owning the entire integration lifecycle, from identifying and sourcing new hardware to collaborating with mechanical and electrical engineers on setup, software integration, and operational deployment. Develop innovative robot control interfaces suited to a variety of morphologies, environments, and tasks. Collaborate closely with research and engineering teams to develop automation tools and machinery that facilitate the evaluation of advanced robotic policies. Lead the design and implementation of data collection, visualization, and quality control processes. You might thrive in this role if you: Have 5+ years of professional software engineering experience developing and shipping production-quality systems in robotics or hardware-integrated environments. Have extensive experience integrating and deploying industrial automation systems, off-the-shelf robotics platforms, or custom hardware into production environments. Bring hands-on experience delivering production-quality software

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

About the Team OpenAI's Industrial Compute organization is building the world's most advanced AI infrastructure ecosystem. Working alongside leading cloud providers, engineering firms, construction partners, utilities, and equipment manufacturers, we are delivering hyperscale AI campuses that enable the next generation of frontier AI models. The Strategic Sourcing team develops and executes the commercial strategies that ensure our infrastructure programs have reliable access to the equipment, materials, and strategic partners needed to deliver at unprecedented scale. We partner closely with Infrastructure Delivery, Capacity Planning, Design Engineering, Hardware Operations, Finance, Legal, and our external suppliers to build a resilient global supply network capable of supporting Industrial Compute's long-term growth. As we continue expanding globally, strategic sourcing becomes a critical competitive advantage, ensuring our infrastructure programs remain cost-effective, resilient, and capable of executing against aggressive deployment timelines. About the Role We are seeking a Strategic Sourcing Manager, Data Center Infrastructure to lead sourcing strategy for the critical infrastructure systems that power Industrial Compute campuses. This role will develop commercial strategies, negotiate strategic supplier agreements, and manage relationships across engineering, construction, manufacturing, and infrastructure partners responsible for delivering mission-critical facilities. You will work closely with Infrastructure Delivery, Capacity Planning, Engineering, Finance, Construction, and external suppliers to ensure Industrial Compute has the capacity, supplier relationships, and commercial frameworks required to support rapid global expansion. The ideal candidate has experience sourcing major infrastructure systems for hyperscale data centers, mission-critical facilities, industrial construction, semiconductor manufacturing, energy infrastructure, or similarly comple

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

About the Team The Privacy Engineering Team at OpenAI is committed to integrating privacy as a foundational element in OpenAI's mission of advancing Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Our focus is on all OpenAI products and systems handling user data, striving to uphold the highest standards of data privacy and security. We build essential production services, develop novel privacy-preserving techniques, and equip cross-functional engineering and research partners with the necessary tools to ensure responsible data use. Our approach to prioritizing responsible data use is integral to OpenAI's mission of safely introducing AGI that offers widespread benefits. About the Role As a part of the Privacy Engineering Team, you will work on the frontlines of safeguarding user data while ensuring the usability and efficiency of our AI systems. You will help us understand and implement the latest research in privacy-enhancing technologies such as differential privacy, federated learning, and data memorization. Moreover, you will focus on investigating the interaction between privacy and machine learning, developing innovative techniques to improve data anonymization, and preventing model inversion and membership inference attacks. This position is located in San Francisco. Relocation assistance is available. In this role, you will: Design and prototype privacy-preserving machine-learning algorithms (e.g., differential privacy, secure aggregation, federated learning) that can be deployed at OpenAI scale. Measure and strengthen model robustness against privacy attacks such as membership inference, model inversion, and data memorization leaks—balancing utility with provable guarantees. Develop internal libraries, evaluation suites, and documentation that make cutting-edge privacy techniques accessible to engineering and research teams. Lead deep-dive investigations into the privacy–performance trade-offs of large models, publishing insights that inform model-training and prod

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

About the Team We are building general-purpose robotics. In the short term, we are focused on robots to support skilled workers to build our future infrastructure. In the long term, we imagine everyone having a personal robot doing anything they need. Progress is rapid, and based on a foundation of co-design between robotics hardware and ML research. About the Role As a Firmware Engineer, you will define and drive the architecture of embedded systems for next-generation hardware products. You will own foundational firmware decisions across real-time execution, device bring-up, hardware interfaces, fault handling, safety mechanisms, and production readiness. We’re looking for someone with deep experience building safety-critical or high-consequence systems, where failures can have meaningful consequences. You should be comfortable reasoning about risk, designing for diagnosability and graceful degradation, and creating engineering practices that raise the reliability bar for the entire team. You should also be unusually good at moving fast. Sometimes the right answer is a carefully reviewed architecture that will endure for years; sometimes it is getting a rough-but-useful prototype working by the end of the afternoon so the team can learn something concrete tomorrow. We value engineers who know the difference, make that call well, and can operate credibly in both modes. You will be both a technical leader and a hands-on builder: setting direction, reviewing critical designs, unblocking the hardest problems, and writing production firmware when it matters most. Our embedded stack uses a lot of Rust. Extensive experience in the language is a big help! This role is based in San Francisco, CA. This role will be expected to be in office 4 days per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees. In this role, you will: Rapidly bring up new hardware and set execution pace for the team. Lead firmware architecture for embedded systems spanning boot, RTOS/runtime behav

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

About the Team Business Marketing at OpenAI helps companies understand, adopt, and realize value from intelligence at work. We believe our own marketing organization should demonstrate what changes when intelligence becomes part of the work: fewer manual handoffs, faster learning, better use of customer and product signals, and more capacity for ambitious thinking. Marketing Technology works across Marketing, go-to-market, Data, Engineering, IT, Security, and Product to define the systems, agents, data, workflows, and operating model that power modern marketing at OpenAI. The team has an opportunity to rethink marketing operations alongside the people building the models, products, and infrastructure shaping the future of AI. About the Role We are hiring a Head of Marketing Operations & Technology to build the most AI-enabled marketing operations organization in the world. You will own the systems, infrastructure, data, and workflows that help Marketing operate with greater intelligence, speed, and impact. You will set the function’s strategy, decide what to build or buy, and develop new capabilities where existing solutions fall short. This role sits at the intersection of marketing, technology, data, and AI. You will partner closely with Engineering, Product, Sales, Growth, and Revenue Operations while building a team of technical operators and builders who can turn ambitious ideas into dependable systems. We welcome varied backgrounds—from marketing operations leaders who have expanded the function’s traditional boundaries to founders and builders of AI-native products, growth infrastructure, or internal platforms. What matters most is a deep understanding of marketing, strong technical instincts, and the ambition to imagine a fundamentally better way of working. In this role, you will: Define the vision, strategy, and operating model for Marketing Operations & Technology, including how AI should reshape the function. Build and lead a team spanning market

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

About the team The Codex Deployment Engineering team helps customers adopt OpenAI's coding tools throughout their software development lifecycle. We act as trusted technical partners, guiding engineering teams as they integrate Codex into their projects and workflows. Our customers span digital-native companies to global enterprises, and we work side-by-side to accelerate how they plan, build, and deliver software. About the Role We are seeking a technically deep, creativity-driven AI Deployment Engineer who is already a power user of AI coding tools and passionate about pushing the boundaries of developer productivity. You will partner directly with engineering leaders and hands-on builders to design, validate, and scale advanced AI workflows, often using Codex to prototype and build the very demos, integrations, and automations customers ultimately adopt. This is a highly cross-functional role that blends technical architecture, product strategy, and customer-facing leadership. You’ll work closely with Sales, Solutions Engineering, Product, Applied Engineering, and the broader Codex organization to advocate for customer needs, shape product direction, and accelerate the successful deployment of intelligent coding systems across some of the world’s most influential companies. In this role, you will: Serve as the primary technical subject matter expert on OpenAI Codex for a portfolio of customers, embedding deeply with them to enable their engineering teams and build coding workflows. Partner directly with customers to design and implement AI-enhanced development workflows, from rapid prototyping through scalable production rollout. Build high-quality demos, reference implementations, and workflow automations, using Codex itself as part of your development process. Lead large-format workshops, technical deep dives, and hands-on enablement sessions that help engineering organizations adopt AI coding tools effectively and safely. Contribute technical content including

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

About the Team The AI Deployment Management (ADM) team enables organizations to turn OpenAI products into real, sustained impact through world-class services execution. Our mission is to help customers successfully adopt and operationalize AI across their organizations. We partner with enterprises to translate the potential of OpenAI’s technology into durable capability - through structured training, technical enablement, and services. By helping customers move from experimentation to production, the ADM team accelerates time-to-value, deepens product adoption, and helps make OpenAI indispensable to how organizations work. About the Role The AI Deployment Manager role is a specialist post-sales enablement role focused on delivering high-impact enablement and adoption services across OpenAI’s product suite. This role is responsible for designing and delivering enablement experiences that support a repeatable adoption framework, driving sustained activation, expanding breadth and depth of usage, and measurable business value across OpenAI’s product suite, including ChatGPT Enterprise and Agents. This role blends strong product fluency, instructional design, and customer advisory. You will lead live workshops, deliver services, and design adoption interventions for audiences ranging from everyday business users to technical practitioners and executive leaders, helping customers understand not just what OpenAI’s products can do, but how to apply them effectively in real world workflows. Success in this role means accelerating customer confidence, increasing product adoption, supporting successful launches of new product capabilities, and helping customers translate product features into tangible outcomes across teams and business functions. You will own outcomes related to activation and sustained usage by shaping how enablement drives measurable customer impact. This role is based in our San Francisco office. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week

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

About the Team OpenAI’s AI Success Engineer team partners with the world’s most ambitious organizations to translate cutting edge AI into real business value. We guide customers from first deployment through scaled enterprise adoption. Our work spans technical integration and enablement, workflow transformation, and sustained program and product delivery. Our customers range from fast growing digital natives to the largest global enterprises, government agencies and educational institutions. Every engagement is an opportunity to shape how AI changes work, productivity, and innovation. This role sits at the center of that mission. About the Role The Success Engineer role is the primary post-sales point of contact for a portfolio of education institutions. You are responsible for driving account health and adoption, ensuring technical readiness, identifying high-impact academic and administrative use cases, and delivering measurable value to our education customers using OpenAI’s platform. This role blends technical leadership, program management, customer advisory, and product influence. You will partner deeply with customer teams, map workflows, lead configuration and enablement, oversee deployment plans, and guide institutions toward high impact use cases that showcase the full value of our platform. You will work closely with Sales, Solutions Architecture, Product, and Research to ensure the customer experience is connected and successful across every touchpoint. Success in this role means accelerating adoption, increasing customer activation depth, guiding strategic use cases that get to production, and helping customers demonstrate tangible business impact. This role is based in SF or NYC; we offer relocation benefits to new hires. In this role, you will: Lead the technical relationship for post-sale customers and act as their trusted advisor on deployment, adoption, and value realization Own account health, adoption velocity, and ongoing technical deployment an

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

About the team OpenAI’s mission is to ensure the responsible and widespread adoption of artificial intelligence. In support of that mission, the Sales team partners closely with customers to deeply understand their businesses and needs, helping inform the development of products and solutions that drive meaningful revenue growth and long-term success on the platform—while maintaining strong standards for user trust and platform integrity. About the role This role is focused on driving new and expanded advertising revenue and ensuring successful business results for advertisers. You will own the full sales cycle — from prospecting to deal closure, developing long-term commercial partnerships to help advertisers achieve their business objectives while ensuring a strong and responsible experience on our platform. You’ll work closely with Account Managers and key cross-functional partners to ensure advertisers achieve successful outcomes after the sale, while maintaining primary ownership of revenue growth and commercial strategy. In this role you will: Prospect, qualify, and close new advertising opportunities, leading the full sales cycle from initial engagement through contract execution. Own and achieve a defined revenue target within an assigned territory or vertical. Develop and execute structured account plans to drive advertiser ROI and long-term revenue growth. Build and maintain relationships with senior-level advertising decision-makers, delivering strategic guidance and actively gathering their feedback. Structure and negotiate complex commercial agreements. Quantify opportunities through clear, data-driven business cases aligned to advertiser objectives. Lead cross-functional collaboration across Product, Engineering, Marketing, Policy, and Operations to support complex deals. Partner with Account Managers to ensure seamless post-sale transitions and coordinated expansion strategies. Maintain rigorous pipeline management and accurate revenue forecasting. Yo

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

About the team OpenAI’s mission is to build safe artificial general intelligence (AGI) which benefits all of humanity. This long-term undertaking brings the world’s best scientists, engineers, and business professionals into one lab together to accomplish this. In pursuit of this mission, our Go To Market (GTM) team is responsible for helping customers learn how to leverage and deploy our highly capable AI products across their business. The team is made of Sales, Solutions, Support, Marketing, and Partnership professionals that work together to create valuable solutions that will help bring AI to as many users as possible. About the Role Our GTM team is uniquely positioned to help customers realize the transformative potential of advanced AI models for their businesses and end users. As part of the GTM Strategy & Operations team, you’ll play a critical role in guiding the GTM strategy and driving the operational efficiency to accomplish this mission. This role serves as a trusted advisor to GTM leadership—providing data-driven insights, managing core operating cadences, and leading high-impact projects that influence how we engage with customers and scale our business. You’ll collaborate cross-functionally with Finance, Enablement, Data and Growth Strategy teams to align efforts, drive efficiencies, and accelerate growth. This role is a central role, meaning it is not tied to a specific business partner, but rather designing the global processes for the business. In this role, you'll: Design, build, and manage our operating rhythms (Forecasting, Pipeline Council, Big Deal Reviews, and MBRs/QBRs). Conduct strategic analyses to determine trends and identify opportunities for process and strategy optimization Collaborate with GTM leadership and cross-functional stakeholders to develop go-to market strategy and resource plans Lead strategic projects to improve efficiency and effectiveness across the revenue organization. Partner closely with technical teams to impl

SQLAWSRestAI
🔔

Get new lead director jobs in San Francisco, United States by email

Daily job updates · Unsubscribe anytime