Business Lead, Life Sciences

OpenAI•San Francisco, CA

9h•Hybrid

About The Position

The Business, Life Sciences team at OpenAI tackles domains where frontier AI can transform science and industry, requiring new approaches that cut across GTM, Research, and Product. Our charter is to prove out high-leverage applications, build the right partnerships, and turn early experiments into sustainable operating models. In life sciences, we work with Research to extend scaling laws into biology and chemistry, aligning scientific progress with real-world deployment. We are hiring a Business Lead to own account and market strategy for a portfolio of strategic life sciences organizations and research institutions. You will translate their highest-leverage priorities and constraints into a multi-year partnership strategy, a joint roadmap, and clear governance. You will orchestrate the internal deal and deployment team to deliver outcomes in regulated environments. We measure success through delivery of customer outcomes, closed-won revenue, and long-term expansion. This role is based in San Francisco, New York, or London. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees. Travel up to 30% is required.

Requirements

Bring 8+ years of experience leading enterprise GTM, strategic partnerships, or commercialization for technical products in regulated life sciences (biotech, pharma, CROs, clinical research, or scientific software), with a track record of closing and expanding multi-year deals, including executive-level buyer mapping and multi-threaded deals.
Have led commercialization of technical products where adoption, governance, and executive trust determined expansion, and can translate deployment evidence into a clear business case for R&D leadership.
Build trust with clinical, regulatory, privacy, and safety stakeholders by aligning contract terms, controls, and delivery plans to risk posture and inspection readiness.
Communicate clearly across scientific, technical, and executive audiences, adapting language to drive alignment, decisions, and delivery.
Build alignment across researchers, builders, and commercial teams, internally and with partners across industry, startups, and academia.
Apply systems thinking with high execution standards, turning failures or escalations in regulated environments into improved operating standards and stronger partner governance.
Hold a strong thesis on AI x Science and place credible market bets on which biology and chemistry problems to pursue, then turn them into focused account plans and repeatable motions.

Responsibilities

Own account and market strategy for a portfolio of life sciences partners, including segmentation, account plans, executive mapping, multi-threading, and a clear plan to expand usage over time.
Build and maintain credibility with customers by translating scientific priorities and risk constraints into joint roadmaps, success metrics, and delivery plans teams can champion and execute.
Drive revenue by leading complex deal cycles from positioning through close, including commercial structuring, pricing, and contracting in close partnership with Research, FDE, Legal, Security/GRC, and Finance.
Run partnership governance that sustains outcomes and expansion, including exec steering, QBRs, escalation paths, and crisp renewal and expansion plans.
Orchestrate cross-functional teams across Product, Engineering, Research, Security/GRC, and GTM to remove blockers, align decision-makers, and deliver partner outcomes on schedule.
Identify and prioritize opportunities where scientific impact and partner value align, and manage trade-offs when priorities conflict across near-term delivery and longer-term platform bets.
Set and defend launch expectations in regulated contexts, ensuring inspection readiness, evidence standards, and reviewer trust under delivery pressure.