About the team
OpenAI builds and deploys advanced AI systems in service of broad societal benefit. As model capability scales, safety, product quality, and institutional trust increasingly depend on how well organizations can see implications early, coordinate across functions, and adapt before drift becomes default behavior.
The Speculative Impacts & Plausible Implications team creates that capacity. We use disciplined speculative prototyping to generate concrete artifacts that make future failure modes and opportunity pathways legible enough for real operational decisions.
About the role
We are hiring a senior Team Leader to establish and run a small, high-leverage unit that converts ambiguity into decision-grade artifacts. This is not a strategy-only role and not a research-only role. You will lead a hybrid practice that produces prototypes (software, hardware, service, narrative, and workflow artifacts) that improve alignment moderation, cross-team cohesion, and roadmap calibration under uncertainty.
You will partner with research, product, engineering, policy, legal, and operations to surface plausible implications before they become incidents. The strongest candidates are generalists with technical depth, humanities-informed judgment, and a demonstrated track record of building things that shift organizational choices.
In this role you will
- Build and lead the Speculative Impacts & Plausible Implications function, including hiring and mentoring a small multidisciplinary team.
- Design and run artifact-led inquiry cycles that translate weak signals into prototypes, scenarios, and operational recommendations.
- Create software and hardware-adjacent prototypes that pressure-test alignment assumptions, moderation policies, and product interaction patterns.
- Develop plausible implication maps tied to concrete launch criteria, escalation paths, and roadmap adjustments.
- Partner across engineering, research, product, policy, and legal to align on safeguards and decision thresholds before deployment risk compounds.
- Establish repeatable review rituals that improve team cohesion and shared language across technical and non-technical groups.
- Publish clear internal briefs and executive-ready synthesis that connect artifact findings to action, ownership, and timing.
You might thrive in this role if you
- Have 12+ years of experience operating across technical, product, and cultural domains, including leadership responsibility for complex programs.
- Are a true multidisciplinary generalist with strong engineering literacy and strong humanities/STS sensibilities; this role is not designed for narrow specialists.
- Have built and shipped real artifacts under uncertainty, including prototypes that materially changed product, policy, or organizational direction.
- Can work fluently across software and hardware contexts, translating between model behavior, interface design, system constraints, and human practice.
- Have substantial experience outside traditional corporate hierarchies (for example entrepreneurship, independent labs, field programs, or community-led initiatives).
- Communicate exceptionally well in writing and live settings, and can align mixed audiences without reducing complexity to slogans.
- Have evidence of community leadership, public speaking, and the ability to convene people across disciplines with clear stakes.
Preferred qualifications
- Founder/operator track record or equivalent entrepreneurial ownership from zero-to-one through operational scale.
- Demonstrated practice in design fiction or related speculative methods used as rigorous tools for research and implementation.
- Track record producing both conceptual and material work: writing, talks, workshops, software systems, physical prototypes, and public artifacts.
- Experience integrating alignment, moderation, and safety considerations directly into product and roadmap processes.
- Experience leading distributed, high-autonomy teams while maintaining quality, velocity, and accountability.
Education & Experience
- Advanced degree (MS/MA/PhD) or equivalent experience in fields such as computer science, HCI, design, STS, anthropology, media arts, systems engineering, or adjacent disciplines.
- Equivalent non-traditional paths are welcome if supported by strong evidence of shipped work, technical competence, and cross-disciplinary leadership.
- Portfolio required: include artifacts that demonstrate both analytical rigor and making practice.
Additional requirements
- Must be able to travel as needed for field research, partner sessions, and cross-site alignment workshops.
- Expected to build and lead a compact team that creates material artifacts, including soft and hard prototypes.
- Comfort operating in high-ambiguity environments with rapid iteration and high accountability.
- Must collaborate effectively across engineering, research, policy, legal, and operations.
Pay transparency
The base salary range for this role is $450,000 - $980,000 per year.
This role is eligible for stock and options grants, full medical coverage, travel allowance, and dedicated GPU allocation support for prototyping and evaluation work.
More context
This team exists to make consequential futures actionable in the present. We use artifacts to test assumptions, increase clarity, and keep decision-making grounded in plausible implications rather than retrospective rationalization.
Notices
OpenAI is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, genetic information, or any other legally protected status.
Qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with applicable law, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.
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