Lead, External Communications

About the Team
The External Communications team supports OpenAI’s mission by helping the organization communicate clearly, responsibly, and effectively with external audiences. The team works closely with partners across the company to navigate complex topics, manage evolving narratives, and ensure OpenAI’s communications reflect its values and long-term goals.

About the Role
As a senior leader on the External Communications team, you will help shape and execute OpenAI’s external communications strategy across a range of high-visibility topics. This role requires strong judgment, comfort operating in fast-moving environments, and the ability to partner closely with senior leaders and cross-functional teams. You will be hands-on in moments that require clarity, speed, and thoughtful decision-making, while also contributing to longer-term narrative development and communications planning.

This role is based in San Francisco, New York, or Washington, DC. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance where applicable.

You’ll be responsible for:

• Leading external communications strategy and execution across priority issues, announcements, and narratives.

• Partnering closely with senior leaders across Communications, Legal, Global Affairs, Product, Research, and other teams to align on messaging and approach.

• Providing guidance and hands-on support for communications related to fast-moving or evolving stories, including situations that require timely response.

• Drafting and reviewing external materials, including statements, talking points, and background materials across media, social, and owned channels.

• Helping establish clear communications principles, best practices, and guidance that support consistent, high-quality external engagement.

• Contributing to the development of durable narratives, FAQs, and reference materials that support the company’s long-term communications goals.

• Exercising judgment on when and how to engage publicly to add clarity, correct factual inaccuracies, or provide relevant context.

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Are a seasoned communications leader with experience navigating complex or high-visibility issues.

• Are comfortable operating in fast-paced, ambiguous environments where priorities can shift quickly.

• Enjoy being directly involved in execution as well as strategy.

• Can build trust and alignment with executives and cross-functional partners.

• Bring strong judgment, calm under pressure, and a bias toward thoughtful action.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity. 

We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.

Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

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