Strategy and Operations Lead, Hardware

OpenAI•San Francisco, CA

4d•$302,000 - $335,000•Hybrid

About The Position

The Marketing team at OpenAI is responsible for bringing products, research, and company priorities to the world with clarity, creativity, and impact. The Marketing Strategy & Operations team builds the operating systems that enable this work to move with focus and speed. This role, as the Strategy & Operations Lead, Hardware Marketing, will be instrumental in building and running the operating system for OpenAI’s Hardware Marketing efforts. The position requires close collaboration with Hardware Marketing leadership, Product Marketing, Product, Design, Creative, Production, Communications, Finance, Legal, and external partners to bring structure to a fast-moving, highly cross-functional product area. The individual will be responsible for clarifying priorities, building plans, managing intake, tracking decisions, surfacing risks, framing tradeoffs, and ensuring critical workstreams progress from planning through operating readiness. This role is ideal for someone who can operate independently in ambiguous situations, build practical systems from scratch, and transition smoothly between strategic thinking and execution. Prior experience with complex product launches or sensitive, cross-functional product areas is preferred. This role is based in San Francisco and operates under a hybrid work model, requiring three days in the office per week. Relocation assistance is available for new employees.

Requirements

12+ years of experience in strategy and operations, business operations, product operations, marketing operations, program management, or a related operating role.
Supported complex product areas or launches with many stakeholders, unclear paths, and changing priorities.
Can take broad, ambiguous goals and turn them into clear plans, owners, decisions, and operating rhythms.
Comfortable leading cross-functional work across senior stakeholders, creative teams, product teams, finance, legal, communications, and external partners.
Know how to use trackers, dashboards, written updates, and decision docs as tools for alignment, not as process for process’ sake.
Can zoom out to understand business context and zoom in to chase down the details that make work actually move.
Communicate clearly, directly, and with good judgment, especially when surfacing risks, tradeoffs, or unresolved decisions.
Energized by building 0-1 systems in a fast-moving environment and improving them as the work changes.
Use AI and automation thoughtfully to reduce manual work, improve visibility, and help teams operate with more leverage.

Nice To Haves

Experience with complex product launches or sensitive, cross-functional product areas is preferred.

Responsibilities

Build and run the core operating rhythm for Hardware Marketing, including planning cycles, planning reviews, weekly priorities, decision forums, risk tracking, and leadership-ready updates.
Partner with Hardware Marketing leadership to translate business and product priorities into clear workstreams, owners, milestones, dependencies, and decisions.
Create visibility across planned and reactive work, helping the team understand what is committed, what is net-new, and where tradeoffs or escalation are needed.
Drive intake and prioritization processes that help Hardware Marketing evaluate new requests against current priorities, capacity, budget, and operating readiness.
Partner with Finance and Marketing leaders on planning inputs, visibility, and tradeoff framing.
Partner with Resource Management, Recruiting, Creative, Production, and Program Management to identify role gaps, operating reviews, planning inputs, resourcing needs, and leadership updates.
Prepare and run key operating forums, including operating readiness reviews, executive check-ins, cross-functional planning meetings, and decision follow-through.
Build lightweight tools, templates, trackers, and playbooks that help the Hardware Marketing team move faster with better shared context.
Proactively identify systemic issues across workflows, decision rights, communication paths, and resourcing, then design practical fixes that can scale.
Maintain strong judgment around confidentiality, access, and context-sharing so the right people have the right information at the right time.