Deal Lead, Special Situtations

OpenAI•San Francisco, CA

30d

About The Position

Special Situations at OpenAI is the company’s commercial engine for its most complex and consequential opportunities. The team operates at the frontier—where new verticals, partnership models, and customer motions must be invented before a repeatable GTM or delivery playbook exists. We bring together product, research, engineering, and GTM leaders to align around a single outcome and move with speed in highly ambiguous environments. Many of these efforts begin as new bets—emerging verticals, novel customer motions, or bespoke partnership models—and mature into repeatable ways of working that shape how OpenAI operates at scale. Special Situations acts as a force multiplier for the company by accelerating decision-making, aligning senior stakeholders, and converting complex opportunities into durable commercial results. We’re hiring a Deal Lead, Special Situations to originate and execute new vertical bets across financial services, life sciences, semiconductors, and energy. In this role, you will go deep in industries you know well, identify where AI can create step-change value, and translate those insights into multi-project commercial programs. You will work closely with field deployment engineers (FDEs), applied researchers, and product teams to shape end-to-end solutions—packaging technical capabilities into compelling commercial offerings and executing creative, non-standard partnerships. Throughout, you’ll keep executives and cross-functional teams aligned as opportunities evolve from concept to signed agreement and delivered outcomes. Special Situations owns the overall success of each program, including commercial outcomes, while functional teams own execution decisions within their domains. You’ll engage executive sponsors when decisions have org- or company-level implications, set direction, build the coalition required to achieve it, and improve decision quality and velocity. When a program no longer requires Special Situations involvement, you’ll move on to the next highest-leverage opportunity.

Requirements

Have 15+ years in business development, partnerships, corporate development or founding roles where you personally drove and closed complex, high-dollar deals from concept through delivery
Have deep domain experience in financial services, life sciences, semiconductors, or energy, including an understanding of how large enterprises in those sectors buy, partner, and deploy technology
Can take a vague opportunity and turn it into a clear commercial thesis that customers, executives, and technical teams can buy into and commit budget against
Excel at building and closing non-standard deals that combine product, services, and long-term strategic value rather than off-the-shelf SKUs
Know how to navigate large, sophisticated buyers, align multiple stakeholders, and keep deals moving when no one has full authority or clarity
Strengthen decisions by framing commercial and technical trade-offs early so partners and OpenAI leadership can commit with confidence
Maintain momentum as scope, pricing, risk, and partnership structures evolve
Create structure and accountability across cross-functional teams so that deals actually convert into delivered outcomes
Deliver results without waiting for perfect information, adjusting the commercial and execution path as reality changes
Represent OpenAI with credibility and executive presence in customer and partner settings, from first conversation through long-term partnership

Responsibilities

Identify and size high-value opportunities across financial services, life sciences, semiconductors, and energy, translating industry pain points into concrete AI-driven commercial theses
Map the partnership and competitive landscape within your vertical and design differentiated strategies that OpenAI can win and scale
Partner with FDEs and applied researchers to design multi-project programs that combine models, tooling, data, and services into outcomes customers will pay for
Define use cases, scope, sequencing, and success metrics that turn ambiguous opportunities into executable programs
Create the technical and commercial narratives—decks, demos, proposals, and deal memos—that align customers, executives, and internal teams around a single plan
Structure and negotiate non-standard partnerships, including revenue share, royalties, and bespoke commercial terms, through contract signature
Drive executive-level alignment and decision-making on trade-offs, resourcing, and risk

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