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Technical Program Manager, Foundations Data and Operations

OpenAI· Research
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Hybrid (San Francisco)Full-timePosted 1mo ago

About the role

Technical Program Manager to lead a broad portfolio of research and engineering programs that power search, partnering with researchers, engineers, and product leaders to turn ambitious goals into clear plans and drive execution across retrieval, indexing, and model improvements.

Responsibilities

  • Lead programs across model training, retrieval, large-scale indexing, and search infrastructure.
  • Translate evolving goals into prioritized workstreams with clear owners, milestones, dependencies, and resource needs.
  • Partner with research, engineering, and product leads to define requirements and make tradeoffs across scope, quality, performance, timelines, and cost.
  • Establish program success metrics and use them to guide priorities and track improvements in coverage, answer quality, responsiveness, and trust.
  • Identify technical and cross-functional risks early, drive blockers to resolution, and communicate progress and decisions clearly to teams and leadership.
  • Coordinate with product, policy, legal, and external partners on data access, use, and presentation, helping teams resolve decisions that span technical and non-technical domains.
  • Manage dependencies with data providers and build repeatable processes that help research and engineering teams execute effectively as the search effort grows.

Qualifications

  • Have substantial technical experience and a record of delivering complex programs across multiple engineering teams and a large technical stack.
  • Have worked on search, information retrieval, indexing, or similarly complex systems. Direct experience with consumer or enterprise search products is especially valuable.
  • Can understand technical architectures and tradeoffs, ask useful questions, and communicate effectively with both engineers and researchers.
  • Bring clarity to ambiguous research problems and adapt plans as teams learn, while maintaining ownership and momentum.
  • Combine product judgment with program discipline, connecting technical decisions to the quality of the user experience.
  • Are resourceful and hands-on, comfortable moving between program strategy and the details needed to unblock execution.
  • Build trust across functions, communicate clearly, and influence decisions across teams with different priorities.

Benefits

  • Medical, dental, and vision insurance for you and your family, with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts
  • Pre-tax accounts for Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and commuter expenses (parking and transit)
  • 401(k) retirement plan with employer match
  • Paid parental leave (up to 24 weeks for birth parents and 20 weeks for non-birthing parents), plus paid medical and caregiver leave (up to 8 weeks)
  • Paid time off: flexible PTO for exempt employees and up to 15 days annually for non-exempt employees
  • 13+ paid company holidays, and multiple paid coordinated company office closures throughout the year for focus and recharge, plus paid sick or safe time
  • Mental health and wellness support
  • Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage
  • Annual learning and development stipend
  • Daily meals in our offices, and meal delivery credits as eligible
  • Relocation support for eligible employees
  • Additional taxable fringe benefits, such as charitable donation matching and wellness stipends
Last updated Sep 3, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About OpenAI

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