Senior Manager, Customs and Trade

OpenAI•San Francisco, CA

22h•Hybrid

About The Position

The Tax and Trade team at OpenAI focuses on integrating crucial tax, export controls, customs, and cross-border considerations into the company's strategies for building, sourcing, scaling, and operating. They aim to anticipate risks and opportunities, enabling informed decisions at the intersection of strategy and execution. This involves developing robust and scalable support services across various departments like procurement, hardware operations, manufacturing, logistics, finance, legal, and supplier onboarding, utilizing advanced technologies such as governed AI and automation to enhance efficiency and scalability in regulated work. This role specifically seeks a Sr. Manager, Customs and Trade Operations to lead OpenAI’s global import customs strategy and operating model. It's a senior position with broad responsibilities covering hardware sourcing, development-stage materials, supplier onboarding, landed-cost design, broker strategy, and cross-border execution. The successful candidate will refine how OpenAI manages import classification, customs valuation, country of origin, importer structure, broker operating models, documentation standards, and shipment decisioning to align with the company's rapid technical development and global operations. Additionally, this role will explore the application of AI and agentic workflows to import processes, aiming to simplify navigation, execution, and scaling of complex regulations. The position is based in San Francisco, CA, with a hybrid work model (3 days in office) and relocation assistance offered.

Requirements

A Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience in international trade operations, trade law, cross-border ecommerce.
Significant experience leading import customs, trade operations, or a closely related function in electronics, semiconductors, robotics, advanced hardware, manufacturing, or other high-technology domains.
Deep expertise in trade law including import classification, customs valuation, country of origin, prototype and temporary-import frameworks, broker management, and customs documentation controls.
Direct experience supporting hardware development processes, sourcing, supplier onboarding, landed-cost analysis, and cross-border execution in a fast-moving product environment.
Strong judgment and a track record of building and scaling programs in multinational, ambiguous, and rapidly evolving operating environments.
Experience translating customs and trade requirements into workflows, systems requirements, service levels, operating guidance, and measurable business outcomes.
The ability to work credibly with procurement leaders, hardware engineers, manufacturing partners, brokers, finance stakeholders, legal partners, and operations teams.
Experience managing service providers and cross-functional programs that require speed, discretion, and strong execution.
Strong writing and communication skills, with the ability to turn complex customs requirements into clear process documentation and practical guidance.
Experience building AI-enabled workflows, internal tools, knowledge systems, or agentic processes for policy-heavy or operational work.

Responsibilities

Refine the strategy and operating model for OpenAI’s import customs program, embedding customs, tariff, and cross-border considerations into sourcing, development-stage materials, supplier operations, and logistics.
Own governance for HTS classification, customs valuation, and country of origin, including decision quality, substantiation, supplier data requirements, broker handoff standards, escalation paths, and reusable knowledge.
Partner with Engineering, Procurement and Strategic Finance to build durable landed-cost, tariff-impact, and importer-structure decision models that support global sourcing and planning.
Lead broker strategy and operating standards across customs brokers, freight forwarders, and trade-advisory partners, including performance management, escalation management, and execution quality.
Build and scale import documentation, recordkeeping, and supplier-onboarding requirements for customs-critical data, including commercial invoices, packing lists, broker packets, entry support, prototype claims, and audit-ready files.
Partner with technical and operations teams to support compliant cross-border movement of development-stage materials and related operational workflows.
Establish customs-related policies, SOPs, training, metrics, SLAs, and escalation paths that reduce avoidable friction and improve execution quality across the import lifecycle.
Partner with Legal, Tax, and Business on origin analysis, tariff monitoring, trade controversy, importer setup, and new market entry.
Build internal tooling and AI-enabled workflows that improve triage, document review, knowledge retrieval, recurring decision support, operational reporting, and overall program scale.