Senior Operations Analyst, User Safety & Risk Operations

About the Team

At OpenAI our User Safety & Risk Operations (USRO) team helps protect our products and users from abuse fraud safety risks and other forms of misuse. We translate real-world user and operational signals into timely decisions practical interventions and improvements to our products and systems.

This role will take on new ambiguous or underdeveloped operational risks and help mature them into scalable capabilities. We work across USRO and partner closely with Product Engineering Data Science Product Policy Legal Safety Support and external vendors or partnership stakeholders.

About the Role

We are seeking a Senior Operations Analyst to take on complex ambiguous safety and risk problems and turn them into practical operational solutions that can scale. This is a senior individual-contributor role for a versatile operator who is comfortable moving between queues investigation analysis workflow design hands-on execution and cross-functional leadership. Depending on team needs the role may focus on emerging-risk incubation cloud deployment partnerships or other new operational areas.

You will be expected to move quickly work hands-on and create structure without waiting for perfect requirements or a large support team. The work starts with the problem not a prescribed process. You may investigate unstructured user signals stand up a lightweight workflow build an AI-assisted tool improve an existing operation or help a new launch become operationally ready. The goal is to produce durable systems that other people can run not simply complete a series of individual tasks.

The portfolio will change with company priorities and may span established harm areas emerging-risk incubation cloud deployments and partnerships device safety or new product launches. Some hires may focus primarily on cloud deployment operations including launch readiness partner coordination safety workflows and operational monitoring. You will typically own a small number of high-impact problems at a time and will be expected to judge what needs to be built what can stay lightweight and when the work is ready to scale transfer or stop.

Location / work model: San Francisco CA; hybrid 3 days/week in-office.

Please note: This role may involve exposure to sensitive or concerning content. Strong discretion good judgment and resilience are essential.

In This Role You Will

• Take ownership of ambiguous high-priority safety and risk problems: define the problem gather the right evidence choose a practical path drive execution and close the loop.

• Analyze structured and unstructured data both quantitative and qualitative. This may include user reports case narratives conversations escalations and operational metrics to identify patterns risks and the highest-leverage interventions.

• Build and test lightweight workflows tools automations and decision aids that improve speed quality and consistency then iterate based on real-world use.

• Turn one-off insights and manual work into scalable operating mechanisms without adding unnecessary process or complexity.

• Lead sensitive investigations incident response or launch-readiness work including safety workflows human review escalation paths partner coordination and operational monitoring for product launches or cloud deployments.

• Work directly with cross-functional and external partners to clarify ownership resolve operational gaps and turn incomplete signals into clear recommendations and decisions.

• Measure whether the work is improving outcomessuch as quality speed coverage operator effort or risk reductionand adjust quickly when it is not.

• Help junior operators build judgment and independence through coaching calibration and reusable tools.

You Might Thrive in This Role If You

• Have 8 years of experience in trust and safety operations investigations incident response product operations technical program management or another high-judgment data-heavy operational field.

• Have a track record as a scrappy generalist who can enter an unfamiliar problem learn quickly and deliver with limited structure or support.

• Are highly data savvy including the ability to make sense of messy qualitative or unstructured information and combine it with quantitative evidence.

• Are technically fluent and hands-on with AI tools dashboards and data tooling and can build or prototype practical solutions without waiting for a dedicated technical team.

• Operate independently make clear tradeoffs and maintain momentum as priorities and requirements change.

• Think in systems: you look beyond the immediate task and build approaches that can be repeated measured and operated by others.

• Exercise strong judgment in sensitive situations involving user impact policy legal risk technical constraints and business priorities.

• Communicate clearly and directly especially in writing and can drive decisions across teams without formal authority.

Nice to Have

• Experience in trust and safety fraud product safety integrity or another adversarial or high-severity risk domain.

• Experience moving a new or immature workflow from early investigation into stable scaled operations.

• Experience supporting cloud platforms or deployment partnerships enterprise products product launches connected devices or other technically complex programs. Direct cloud experience is a plus not a requirement.

• Familiarity with SQL lightweight scripting no-code tools workflow automation or AI-assisted development.

• Experience with vendor operations quality programs calibrations or distributed operational teams.

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:

Senior IC