Program Manager, Local Community Impact

OpenAI•New York, NY

2d•$165,000 - $184,000

About The Position

OpenAI’s Community team builds direct relationships with people who use its technology, learns from their experiences, and brings their insights to product and research teams. Its programs connect communities with trusted partners who help organizations adopt AI effectively. The Program Manager will build and run a partner network that helps small businesses, nonprofits, and community organizations experience practical benefits from OpenAI technology. The role will turn an early-stage program into a reliable, scalable operation by recruiting and onboarding partners, coordinating agreements and payments, managing service providers, supporting local events and marketing, reviewing service quality, and improving the program based on feedback and results. Partners will help community members create useful workflows, learn OpenAI tools, and become more confident and independent users. The role combines hands-on partner support with designing systems that prevent recurring problems. The Program Manager will work with local operators and internal teams to clarify commitments, ensure work is completed, and deliver useful, high-quality support. The position also involves building operational processes, managing budgets and risks, and collaborating with analytics and product teams to assess impact and inform improvements.

Requirements

At least 8 years owning a complex partner, community, or operational program from early design through execution at scale, with clear examples of personally built and improved work.
Strong operational judgment and follow-through across onboarding, financial workflows, events, and multiple stakeholder groups.
Ability to earn trust with small-business owners, local technical operators, and community leaders; explain expectations plainly and handle difficult conversations when needed.
Practical familiarity with ChatGPT, Codex, and AI-enabled workflows, and ability to work credibly with technical specialists while explaining tools to people with less technical experience.
Ability to use data and qualitative feedback to distinguish meaningful outcomes from activity counts and improve processes without unnecessary bureaucracy.
Clear writing and communication, early risk communication, independent work through ambiguity, and effective cross-team collaboration.
Experience creating playbooks, support systems, or automation that helps a high-touch program scale.

Nice To Haves

Experience operating a local-services, small-business, nonprofit, fellowship, ambassador, or distributed partner program.
Experience coordinating vendor onboarding, invoices, budgets, or grant-like payment workflows with Finance and Legal.
Experience running hands-on workshops or community events and translating successful local practices into reusable resources.
Experience working across marketing, product, analytics, and public-policy or regional teams.

Responsibilities

Build and manage the partner operating model, including partner sourcing and selection, onboarding, ongoing support, renewal, and exit.
Establish clear partner expectations, owners, timelines, escalation paths, and scalable processes that adapt as the program and partner needs grow.
Coordinate partner onboarding with Legal, Finance, and Procurement, including agreements, required information, vendor setup, readiness, and start dates.
Manage partner payments, reporting, and related operational processes.
Plan and support local workshops, deployments, and events, coordinating audiences, venues, budgets, materials, staffing, and follow-up while preserving local ownership.
Coordinate program marketing and communications with Community, Marketing, and content partners; develop partner guidance and route brand and messaging approvals.
Build relationships with local operators and the organizations they serve; coach partners, answer questions, address service-quality concerns, and clarify boundaries around access, funding, and participation.
Create partner-community systems such as intake processes, a shared knowledge base, service logs, regular check-ins, and reusable playbooks.
Develop and operate partner review processes with the hiring manager and relevant teams, using verified service delivery, beneficiary feedback, and sustained product use to assess performance and improve support.
Collaborate with analytics and product teams to assess program impact using appropriate data and feedback.
Manage program budgets, vendors, risks, and dependencies; keep stakeholders informed, surface decisions early, and bring recurring partner feedback into program and product improvements.