Senior Director, Employee Relations & Investigations

About the Team

OpenAIs People team aims to hire engage and retain world-class talent who will ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. Within People our HR team supports a complex fast-growing employee group of scientists engineers and business professionals. The team brings together expertise across business partnership employee experience people operations compensation and benefits inclusion learning and development and employee relations.

About the Role

We are seeking a senior Employee Relations leader to build and lead a high-trust high-rigor Employee Relations and Investigations function. This role will oversee both the companys employee relations strategy and its investigation practice helping OpenAI navigate its most complex sensitive and consequential workplace matters with consistency fairness sound judgment and care.

You will lead a team of ER and investigations professionals set the operating model and standards for the function and serve as a close advisor to senior leaders HR Business Partners Legal Compliance and other cross-functional partners. The role requires someone who can move fluidly from executive-level counsel and risk assessment to building scalable systems developing talent and improving the employee experience across a rapidly evolving global organization.

This role is based in San Francisco CA. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.

Key Responsibilities:

• Set and execute the strategy for Employee Relations and Investigations including the teams mandate service model escalation paths governance operating rhythms and measures of success.

• Lead develop and scale a team of experienced ER and investigations professionals; establish clear quality standards decision frameworks and coaching practices that produce consistent defensible outcomes.

• Oversee the intake triage investigation and resolution of the companys highest-risk and most sensitive workplace matters including allegations of harassment discrimination retaliation misconduct conflicts of interest workplace violence and other policy violations.

• Personally advise on or lead matters involving senior leaders significant reputational or legal risk cross-functional complexity or novel questions; ensure investigation strategy matches the risk sensitivity confidentiality and facts of each case.

• Establish rigorous fair and trauma-informed investigation practices including evidence review interviewing credibility assessments documentation findings recommendations and appropriate follow-through.

• Own the broader ER framework across performance management workplace conflict disciplinary action accommodations and leave-related escalations employee concerns separations and other critical moments in the employment relationship.

• Serve as a trusted advisor to executives people leaders and HR Business Partners helping them make principled timely and well-calibrated decisions under ambiguity.

• Partner closely with Employment Legal Compliance Security People Operations and HR leadership to assess risk manage claims or regulatory matters and ensure practices reflect applicable laws and OpenAIs policies and values.

• Build scalable policies playbooks case-management practices and decision tools that improve consistency and transparency while preserving the judgment required for complex situations.

• Use case data employee signals and trend analysis to identify systemic issues surface emerging risk and recommend proactive interventions to leadership.

• Develop and deliver practical training for leaders managers HR partners and employees on respectful workplace expectations investigations performance management conflict resolution and manager accountability.

• Represent the ER and Investigations perspective in major people programs organizational changes and culture initiatives so that employee experience fairness and risk are considered early.

You might thrive in this role if you have:

• 15 years of progressive experience in Employee Relations workplace investigations employment law HR leadership or a closely related field with significant experience leading complex high-risk matters.

• Demonstrated experience leading and developing a senior ER and/or investigations team in a fast-paced high-growth globally distributed or highly matrixed environment.

• Deep expertise in end-to-end workplace investigations including executive-level and highly sensitive matters and the judgment to distinguish when to investigate when to advise and when to escalate.

• Strong knowledge of U.S. employment law and employee relations practices including EEO ADA FMLA FLSA retaliation harassment discrimination performance management and disciplinary processes; global ER experience is a strong plus.

• A track record of building or evolving an ER operating model including policies playbooks case-management systems reporting quality standards and scalable manager-facing tools.

• Exceptional executive presence and influence with the ability to earn trust communicate clearly and provide candid advice to leaders at every level of the organization.

• Excellent analytical and written communication skills including the ability to synthesize complex and conflicting facts into clear findings risk assessments and recommendations.

• Sound judgment discretion objectivity and composure in situations that are sensitive ambiguous time-critical or emotionally charged.

• A collaborative low-ego leadership style and a commitment to developing others strengthening manager capability and building a respectful inclusive and high-performing workplace.

• A J.D. is required for this position

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core and to achieve our mission we must encompass and value the many different perspectives voices and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity.

We are an equal opportunity employer and we do not discriminate on the basis of race religion color national origin sex sexual orientation age veteran status disability genetic information or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

For additional information please see OpenAIs Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.

Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act for US-based candidates. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary confidential and non-public addition job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

To notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant please submit a report through this form. No response will be provided to inquiries unrelated to job posting compliance.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities and requests can be made via this link.

OpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy

At OpenAI we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.

Required Experience:

Exec