Procurement Specialist in San Francisco

Who are we? Cohere is the leading security-first enterprise AI company. We build cutting-edge foundation AI models and end-to-end products that are designed to solve real-world business problems. We’re training and deploying frontier models for enterprises who are building AI systems. We believe that our work is instrumental to the widespread adoption of AI and we are looking for folks that want to be part of that. We obsess over what we build. Each one of us is responsible for contributing to increasing the capabilities of our models and the value they drive for our customers. Cohere is a team of researchers, engineers, designers, and more, who are all passionate about their craft. We are a global technology company headquartered in Toronto with key offices in London, New York City, San Francisco, Montreal, Paris, Berlin and Seoul. Join us! Why This Role: Cohere seeks a Strategic Sourcing Specialist to manage our Professional Services Procurement function. In this role you will be responsible for executing Strategic Sourcing activities across these categories as we continue to grow rapidly. You will collaborate with FP&A, Accounting, Legal, and multiple business stakeholders to support our Procurement operations. This is an opportunity for a hands-on Procurement professional who thrives in a high-growth environment, is comfortable navigating ambiguity, and can help implement efficient processes. You’ll be instrumental in building Procurement categories for Professional Services spend and owning their development and optimization. You’ll have the opportunity to establish best practices, drive significant cost savings, and create strategic partnerships with key service providers that support our business growth. Contract Terms: This is a 12-month fixed-term contract position with the potential for conversion to a permanent role based on business needs and performance. Please note that conversion to a permanent position is not automatic and will be subject to a se

About the Team The Finance Platform & Technology team builds and scales the systems and data architecture that power OpenAI’s core financial operations. We enable business agility, compliance, and operational excellence across procure-to-pay, quote-to-cash, supply chain, financial planning, and asset management. We partner with Procurement, Accounting, Tax, Legal, Security, Data, and Engineering to modernize workflows through thoughtful platform design, reliable integrations, scalable automation, and trusted data. About the Role As a Business Systems Lead for Procure-to-Pay, you will be a hands-on engineer who designs, builds, and operates the integrations and first-party applications that power OpenAI’s procurement workflows. You will translate business needs into secure, scalable software, APIs, data flows, and automation across Oracle Fusion, Zip, and connected platforms. You will build the future of buying at OpenAI using OpenAI’s own technology, from guided intake and approval experiences to supplier onboarding, purchasing, receiving, invoicing, and downstream financial data flows. You will own the technical roadmap and support model for these capabilities, improving today’s platforms while deciding where to integrate, configure, or build as OpenAI scales. Your core strength will be software and integration engineering. You will personally write code, troubleshoot cross-system failures, and take solutions through testing, deployment, and production support. You will also make targeted functional configurations in procurement platforms and partner with functional specialists on deeper process and module design. 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: Design, build, and operate integrations across Oracle Fusion, Zip, and connected systems using APIs, events, messaging, and batch interfaces where appropriate. Build first-party

About the Team Life sciences is one of the clearest areas where advances in intelligence can meaningfully benefit the world at large. The OpenAI Life Sciences team works at the intersection of advancing frontier life sciences model capabilities and building products to help scientists accelerate their research and leverage the full potential of AI for scientific work. Rosalind Workbench brings together the scientific tools, data sources, interactive biology file viewers and core life sciences workflows into a central environment to help scientists investigate questions, design experiments, analyze results, and advance discovery. Rosalind Workbench can be used with any OpenAI model, including GPT-Rosalind--our dedicated life sciences model, which combines frontier reasoning with specialized tool orchestration across medicinal chemistry, genomics, wet-lab assistance, and other scientific applications. Our long term vision is for teams of agents to work together across these domains, giving researchers access to broader expertise and the ability to pursue more ambitious scientific questions. About the Role We’re looking for a Product Manager to shape Rosalind Workbench for life sciences. You will own product strategy and execution, working directly with researchers in academic labs, biotech, and pharma to understand where AI can meaningfully improve their work. You’ll partner with engineering, research, design, and customer-facing teams to turn emerging capabilities into intuitive products that scientists return to. This role calls for strong product judgment, depth in life sciences, and the ability to move from an ambiguous research problem to a focused, shippable experience. In this role, you will have the opportunity to define the future of AI guided scientific discovery and build the capabilities and tools that help advance the scientific frontier for researchers and help increase the accessibility of model intelligence for scientific use. This is a chance to shape

About the Team OpenAI Finance is responsible for ensuring the organization is set up for success in pursuit of its mission. Within Finance, the Procurement team serves as a trusted advisor to the business, optimizing investments, securing essential resources, and enabling OpenAI’s mission through efficient and effective procurement practices. The Extended Workforce team helps OpenAI access specialized and flexible talent while creating a consistent, compliant, and high-quality experience for hiring managers, workers, vendors, and internal partners. As part of an AI-native organization, we are also rethinking how extended workforce programs should operate, using AI, automation, data, and new ways of working to reduce friction, improve decision-making, and build more scalable workforce solutions. Our goal is not simply to modernize traditional contingent workforce practices, but to help define what best-in-class extended workforce management looks like in an AI-first company. About the Role We’re looking for an experienced, hands-on Senior Manager to operate and continuously improve key elements of OpenAI’s extended workforce program. Reporting to the Head of Extended Workforce, you will be a trusted partner responsible for translating program priorities into clear plans, scalable solutions, and measurable outcomes. This is an individual contributor role with significant cross-functional ownership and influence. You will take ownership of complex workstreams, solve ambiguous operational challenges, and partner closely with our Extended Workforce Operations team, Global Compliance Lead, and cross-functional stakeholders to strengthen the systems, workflows, and partnerships that enable the program to scale globally. While operational excellence is at the heart of this role, we are equally excited about what comes next. We believe AI presents an opportunity to fundamentally rethink how extended workforce programs operate. We are looking for someone who enjoys challengin

About the Team OpenAI Finance helps ensure the organization is positioned for long-term success as we pursue our mission. The Strategic Sourcing & Procurement team enables OpenAI to scale responsibly, securely, and at speed by helping teams choose the right external partners, structure strong commercial agreements, and build resilient supplier ecosystems. We work at the intersection of innovation and execution, partnering closely with leaders across the company to turn rapidly evolving needs into scalable, compliant, and economically sound solutions. Professional services are a critical source of specialized expertise, capacity, and operational leverage across OpenAI. Our work spans consulting and advisory services, finance and accounting, legal, people and talent, managed services, and other enterprise capabilities. Done well, sourcing becomes a source of trust and momentum—helping teams move faster with the right partners, clearer outcomes, stronger economics, and appropriate safeguards. About the Role We are seeking a Strategic Sourcing Lead to own and execute OpenAI’s category strategy for Professional Services. This is an experienced individual-contributor role for a high-velocity, hands-on sourcing operator who can set category priorities, own complex work end to end, exercise sound judgment, influence senior stakeholders, and build scalable category mechanisms in a rapidly growing organization. You will turn incomplete information, shifting priorities, and unclear decision paths into practical next steps and disciplined execution. You will manage a broad portfolio of services engagements—from strategic advisory relationships and enterprise programs to high-volume statements of work. Partnering directly with leaders across Finance, Accounting, Legal, People, Extended Workforce, and business teams, you will set category priorities and translate needs into clear sourcing strategies, executable engagement models, and measurable outcomes. You will operate inde

About the Team OpenAI Finance ensures the organization is positioned for long-term success as we pursue our mission. The Strategic Sourcing & Procurement function plays a critical role in enabling OpenAI to deliver impact across research, product development, technology infrastructure, and services by helping the company scale responsibly, securely, and with strong commercial discipline. Our work sits at the intersection of innovation and execution. We partner closely with teams across OpenAI to translate rapidly evolving business needs into scalable, compliant, and economically sound external partnerships. As OpenAI continues to grow at pace, services sourcing is becoming increasingly strategic across the company. Every business unit relies on external service providers in different ways — to extend capacity, access specialized expertise, support operations, and accelerate execution. Done well, Procurement becomes a source of trust and momentum, helping OpenAI move faster with the right partners, stronger commercial outcomes, and the right level of protection. About the Role We are seeking an experienced Strategic Sourcing (GTM) Leader to lead strategic sourcing and commercial enablement for OpenAI’s Go-to-Market organization across B2B and B2C channels. You will manage substantial and rapidly growing spend while shaping sourcing strategies and scalable commercial pathways across Media, Creative, Production, Influencer, Agency, Sponsorships, Analytics, Communications, and Event suppliers in support of high-impact global initiatives. You’ll help evolve our GTM procurement function from reactive deal support into a speed-enabling, scalable commercial engine that delivers cost efficiency, launch readiness, and strong governance in a fast-moving environment. In this role, you will: Develop and execute sourcing strategies across GTM, Brand, Global Affairs, Events, Growth, and Partnership activities—spanning both B2B and B2C channels—that align with our mission and b

About the Team Security is at the foundation of OpenAI’s mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. The Security team protects OpenAI’s technology, people, and products. We are technical in what we build but are operational in how we do our work, and are committed to supporting all products and research at OpenAI. Our Security team tenets include: prioritizing for impact, enabling researchers, preparing for future transformative technologies, and engaging a robust security culture. About the Role OpenAI is seeking to build an investigative capability for Secure Manufacturing & Stealth programs. The risk surface for unreleased products, prototypes, confidential hardware, infrastructure, supply chain, manufacturing, and launch-readiness efforts spans employees, vendors, suppliers, logistics partners, physical movement of assets, procurement records, manufacturing workflows, access systems, device telemetry, and adversarial collection. This role is intended to build and run investigations across that specialized environment. In this role, you will: Lead complex SMS investigations to proactively identify and mitigate risks to unreleased products, prototypes, confidential hardware, secure manufacturing programs, and launch-readiness efforts. Investigate unauthorized disclosure, suspected leaks, insider risk, supplier compromise, vendor misconduct, theft, diversion, tampering, counterfeiting, surveillance, adversarial collection, and suspicious activity involving sensitive programs. Connect digital evidence, physical access activity, supply chain records, manufacturing data, vendor behavior, employee activity, collaboration metadata, procurement records, shipping data, and OSINT into clear findings and risk-reduction actions. Conduct proactive threat hunting to surface early indicators of compromise, collection, leakage, or insider activity affecting sensitive programs. Develop investigative playbooks, evidence-handling standards,

ABOUT BASETEN Baseten powers mission-critical inference for the world's most dynamic AI companies, like Cursor, Notion, OpenEvidence, Abridge, Clay, Gamma and Writer. By uniting applied AI research, flexible infrastructure, and seamless developer tooling, we enable companies operating at the frontier of AI to bring cutting-edge models into production. We're growing quickly and recently raised our $1.5B Series F , led by Altimeter Capital, Conviction Partners, and Spark Capital. Join us and help build the platform engineers turn to to ship AI products. THE ROLE We're looking for a Procurement Lead to build Baseten's procurement function from the ground up. This is a foundational, high-ownership role for someone who wants to define how a company runs procurement, not inherit an existing process. As the company scales across engineering, GTM, and corporate functions, we need to build purchasing workflows and vendor relationships. This is a rare, critical-moment hire: you'll set the leading-practice processes, systems, and policies that the company runs on as it continues to grow, with the mandate and dedicated focus to build something built to scale. This role exists to make procurement a source of leverage for the business, not friction. Your goal is to build scalable process, take on vendor management and RFP work that today sits informally with individual teams, and free up business owners' time and capacity, all while building the guardrails the company needs as it grows. You'll partner closely with Finance, Legal, Security, Compliance, IT, and business owners across the company, and you'll be judged on whether teams feel supported and unblocked, not slowed down. RESPONSIBILITIES Procurement Strategy and Process Design and implement Baseten's first company-wide procurement process, approval routing, and other workflows Establish procurement policies (spend thresholds, approval authority, competitive bidding requirements) tailored to a high-growth business Design pr

About the Team The Procurement organization enables OpenAI's mission by ensuring every dollar is spent responsibly, compliantly, and efficiently. Within Procurement, the Center of Excellence (COE) team is responsible for designing and scaling the processes, systems, governance, and operating models that enable Procurement to grow effectively alongside the business. This role partners closely with Procurement and cross-functional teams to simplify how work gets requested, routed, approved, and managed across the spend lifecycle. By combining program leadership, process design, and change enablement, we help Procurement scale while maintaining strong controls and delivering an exceptional experience for employees and business partners. About the Role As Procurement Portfolio & Delivery Lead, you will lead complex, cross-functional initiatives that span Strategic Sourcing, Procure-to-Pay (P2P), Extended Workforce, Travel & Expense, Corporate Card, Risk, Legal, Finance, and Technology teams. You will not only drive project and program execution, but also actively contribute to solution design, requirements development, process optimization, testing, rollout planning, and stakeholder alignment. This is a highly collaborative role for someone who thrives in fast-moving environments, can bring structure to ambiguity, and is equally comfortable facilitating executive discussions, building project plans, and rolling up their sleeves to help move initiatives forward. 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: Lead cross-functional procurement transformation programs spanning Strategic Sourcing, P2P, Extended Workforce, T&E, Corporate Card, Risk, and Procurement Systems. Develop and maintain the Procurement transformation roadmap, partnering across teams to identify opportunities, prioritize initiatives, map dependencies, sequence work

About the Role We’re looking for a Procurement Enablement Lead to improve how employees and stakeholders navigate procurement at OpenAI. This role partners across Procurement, Finance, Legal, Security, Privacy, and Enterprise Technology to simplify workflows, improve guidance, and support scalable procurement experiences across the procurement lifecycle. You’ll translate procurement policies and operational requirements into clearer processes, better-enabled systems, and more intuitive employee experiences that reduce friction while strengthening consistency and controls as OpenAI continues to grow. This role is ideal for someone who combines operational judgment, process design, and strong cross-functional partnership skills. You should be comfortable working in evolving environments where systems and workflows are still being built and continuously improved. A key part of the role will be identifying opportunities to use AI and automation to streamline workflows, reduce manual work, and improve service delivery across Procurement operations. This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days per week in the office and offer relocation assistance to new employees. In this role, you will: Partner across Procurement, Finance, Legal, Security, Privacy, and Enterprise Technology to improve how procurement work gets requested, routed, approved, and supported across the spend lifecycle. Help design and improve procurement intake, guidance, and workflow experiences that make it easier for employees and stakeholders to navigate procurement processes. Translate procurement policies, operational needs, stakeholder feedback, and operational insights into clear business requirements for workflows, automation, reporting, analytics, and process improvements. Partner with Enterprise Technology and tool owners to support workflow configuration improvements across procurement systems, including approvals, routing, SLAs, escalation paths, exception handlin

About the Team OpenAI’s Sourcing and Procurement organization helps the company acquire and scale the products, services, and partnerships needed to advance its mission. As the organization grows, we are looking for a strategic builder-operator to establish an AI-led contracting capability that improves speed, consistency, and execution across the company. In this role, you will partner with leaders and stakeholders across Procurement, Legal, Finance, Security, Engineering, and business teams to design and oversee the contracting process from intake through negotiation and lifecycle management. You will bring structure to ambiguity, align partners around shared priorities, and build repeatable operating mechanisms, responsible AI-assisted workflows, and a centralized contract lifecycle management (CLM) system of record that enable sourcing coordinators to execute agreements consistently and help the business scale. About the Role As a Contract Management Lead, you will build, lead, and continuously improve OpenAI’s AI-led contracting help desk—a new capability designed to scale contract drafting, review, negotiation, and lifecycle management without significantly increasing headcount. You will own the service strategy, operating model, delivery oversight, coordinator enablement, workflow design, and performance tracking. Sourcing coordinators will manage day-to-day negotiations and agreement execution; you will ensure they have the tools, playbooks, training, guidance, and escalation support required to deliver timely, consistent, and well-governed outcomes. This is a builder-operator and service-ownership role for someone who combines strong commercial contracting and legal-language fluency with a product-management mentality. You will be hands-on in building the systems, playbooks, AI-enabled workflows, and reporting that support the contracting desk—not in personally negotiating every agreement. You will use a contract lifecycle management (CLM) platform as the c

About the Team OpenAI is building Procurement of the future: one that uses AI-enabled systems, clean data, and scalable processes to help the business absorb increasing complexity, speed, volume, and throughput while enabling teams across OpenAI to operate more strategically and at greater scale while managing risk responsibly. The Procurement Operations team supports the operational flow of purchasing across OpenAI, helping teams turn business needs into complete, policy-aligned, and executable procurement activity. We partner across Procurement, Finance, Legal, Security, Accounting, Accounts Payable, Systems, and business teams to improve how requests, suppliers, purchase orders, approvals, data, documentation, and downstream handoffs move through our systems. As OpenAI scales, we are building procurement operations that can absorb increasing complexity without adding unnecessary friction. That means using AI thoughtfully, simplifying where we can, strengthening operating discipline where we must, and continuously improving how our stakeholders experience procurement. About the Role We are hiring two Senior Managers, Procurement Operations to manage the operational backbone of how OpenAI turns requests into committed, controlled, and payable spend. One role will focus on Technology categories, and the other will focus on Corporate Services categories. These roles are not removed from the work. You will be expected to review requests in the system, make or guide request and PO updates, resolve operational issues, and use that firsthand view to identify what needs to change. You will push the envelope without losing the thread on risk, staying close enough to the details to understand where friction, ambiguity, and control gaps show up. You will help improve procurement outcomes across intake, purchase requests, PO quality, supplier coordination, approval workflows, documentation, service delivery, and downstream financial handoffs. You will oversee and improve oper

About the Team OpenAI is building Procurement of the future: one that uses AI-enabled systems, clean data, and scalable processes to help the business absorb increasing complexity, speed, volume, and throughput — while enabling teams across OpenAI to operate more strategically and at greater scale. The Hardware Procurement Operations team supports the operational flow of goods and hardware purchasing across OpenAI's hardware business units. We help teams turn business needs into controlled, accurate, and executable procurement activity, from request intake through purchase orders, supplier coordination, change management, receiving readiness, and downstream invoice support. As OpenAI scales, we are building procurement operations that can support changing hardware needs, new business unit priorities, and increasing operational complexity. That means creating practical standards where they help, preserving flexibility where the business requires it, and continuously improving how requests, suppliers, POs, data, and controls move through our systems. About the Role As a Senior Manager of Procurement Operations focused on Hardware, you will own procurement operations for one or more assigned hardware business units. You will be the day-to-day DRI for hardware and goods procurement activity, leading work from intake through purchase requests, POs, supplier needs, changes, receiving readiness, and operational escalations. This is a hands-on operator-builder role for someone who understands the practical complexity of hardware and goods procurement and can both run the work and redesign how the work gets done. You will keep work moving while improving the operating model through better systems, workflows, automation, AI-enabled processes, controls, metrics, and operating leverage. You will evaluate how people, process, policy, systems, data, fiscal controls, and accounting practices come together, and you will work closely with other Central Procurement and BU Procurement

About the Team Strategic Sourcing & Procurement helps OpenAI secure the products, services, and partnerships that support our research, build our products, and grow our business. We work with teams across the company to make sound commercial decisions and move important work forward. As OpenAI grows, we are rethinking how sourcing works: bringing expertise into decisions earlier, simplifying contracting, and using AI to give Procurement more time for judgment and strategic work. What we learn internally—and through our supplier and enterprise-buyer relationships—can also inform better products, partnerships, and industry adoption. About the Role We’re looking for a senior leader to head Sourcing Enablement & Delivery, leading sourcing operational delivery, contracting enablement, and AI transformation—and building Procurement’s contribution to OpenAI’s commercial growth. You will build the teams, systems, service model, and cross-functional partnerships that enable sourcing and contracting at scale, helping teams move quickly without losing commercial discipline or accountability. You will partner with GTM, Sales, and Partnerships to develop Procurement’s contribution to OpenAI adoption and commercial growth. Bring procurement-industry knowledge, buyer insights, and lessons from internal AI use into customer engagement, product feedback, and opportunities across the procurement ecosystem. Reporting to the Head of Strategic Sourcing, you will manage the Sourcing Delivery and Contract Management leaders and shape this new function’s priorities, team, and measures of success. 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. Priorities and what success looks like A focused roadmap: clear choices about what to build first, what to defer, and how progress will be measured. Stronger delivery: capable leaders and teams, faster execution, less rework, and fewer unres

About the Team OpenAI's Industrial Compute organization is building and scaling the infrastructure required to support frontier AI. The Infrastructure Strategic Sourcing team connects technical and project requirements to supplier readiness, contracting, purchasing, equipment delivery, and portfolio-level risk visibility across owner-furnished contractor-installed equipment (OFCI), data center networking, rack systems and integration, fiber, cabling, optical interconnects, and related infrastructure. The team partners across Pre-Construction, Design, Construction, Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, Network Engineering, Hardware and Rack Delivery, Strategic Sourcing, Procurement, Legal, Finance, Accounts Payable, Logistics, and external suppliers. We build the operating mechanisms that keep sourcing decisions, purchase execution, long-lead equipment, network and fiber dependencies, rack readiness, and delivery commitments aligned to infrastructure schedules. About the Role We are seeking an Infrastructure Sourcing Operations Lead to own procurement operations across pre-construction, design, construction, and sourcing through purchase order issuance, while maintaining visibility through invoice resolution, production, logistics, delivery, installation, and readiness. The portfolio includes electrical and mechanical OFCI, networking equipment, rack systems and integration, fiber, cabling, optical interconnects, and other infrastructure required to bring capacity online. In this role, you will set priorities, make or escalate decisions that affect cost, supplier relationships, contractual position, and delivery schedules, and define the standards used by execution support for queue management, documentation, tracker maintenance, and recurring reporting. Success requires sound commercial and program judgment, operational rigor, systems thinking, and the ability to turn incomplete information across vendors, tools, and project teams into clear decisions, accountable