OpenAI

Cyber Operations Lead, Critical Harm Operations

OpenAI$150K — $180K *
Information Technology
8 - 10 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 8+ years in cybersecurity, cyber intelligence, or a related field
  • 4+ years of experience in leadership roles
  • Designed and launched operational automation systems
  • Proven experience building cyber operations at scale
  • Strong analytical skills with a focus on data-driven improvements
  • Exceptional executive presence and communication skills
  • Experience in navigating complex, ambiguous environments

Responsibilities

  • Set strategic direction for Cyber Operations and create operating models and SOPs
  • Act as the senior expert for high-risk cybersecurity decisions
  • Build trust and navigate complexities across teams and partners
  • Transform policy ambiguity into clear decision-making frameworks
  • Develop reviewer capability through training and feedback
  • Own and enhance operational health metrics
  • Utilize analysis and automation to identify and address performance issues
  • Create scalable systems from inception to execution

Benefits

  • Hybrid work model with 3 days in office
  • Relocation assistance for new employees
Full Job Description
About the Role

We're looking for a senior cybersecurity and cyber intelligence practitioner who is also an operations leader, strategist, and people manager. You'll bring sound cyber judgment, strong analytical and automation instincts, and the ability to stay close to the work while setting direction, managing and developing people, aligning partners, building programs from 01, and translating ambiguity into durable operating systems.

This role combines senior individual-contributor depth with direct people-management accountability. You'll personally shape complex cyber judgments, operating models, SOPs, quality systems, and automation strategies while building, coaching, and holding accountable a high-performing team. You'll also lead through influence across FTEs, BPO partners, and cross-functional teams. Baseline operational health-including quality, queue coverage, productivity, and SLA adherence-is table stakes; success is additionally measured by durable improvements to decision quality, stakeholder alignment, reviewer capability, and the systems that run the operation.

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.

In this role, you will:
  • Set the strategic direction for Cyber Operations and translate high-level organizational priorities into a clear operating model, roadmaps, SOPs, escalation paths, quality goals, and safe-access strategies.
  • Serve as the senior cybersecurity and cyber intelligence expert for complex and high-risk decisions across ChatGPT, API, Codex, agents, and emerging product surfaces.
  • Build trust, create clarity, navigate disagreement, and move people through ambiguity across FTEs, BPO partners, and cross-functional teams.
  • Turn policy ambiguity, quality misses, appeals, and reviewer disagreement into clear decision rules, calibration examples, training, and tooling requirements.
  • Build and scale reviewer capability through onboarding, certification, coaching, feedback, recurring calibration, and close partnership with vendor leadership.
  • Own operational health across Cyber Operations, including queue coverage, reviewer productivity, quality metrics, SLA adherence, escalation hygiene, and proactive identification of performance gaps before downstream teams need to flag them.
  • Use analysis and automation to diagnose root causes, surface risk, prioritize high-leverage fixes, and reduce manual effort.
  • Build durable quality and evaluation systems that improve decision quality through calibration, adjudication, monitoring, and feedback loops.
  • Build new operational capabilities from 01, then scale them: define the problem, align partners, test the model, establish metrics, and turn what works into repeatable operations.
  • Present crisp recommendations, tradeoffs, and operational strategy to executives and internal and external partners; represent Cyber Operations in high-stakes discussions and launch decisions.

You might thrive in this role if you:
  • Have 8+ years of experience in cybersecurity, cyber intelligence, threat intelligence, incident response, security research, or a related field, including 4+ years of leading teams.
  • Built and scaled a cyber operations, cyber intelligence, or abuse-prevention capability across regions, products, or a large user base.
  • Designed and launched human-in-the-loop automation or evaluation systems that materially improved safety, quality, or operational scale.
  • Bring strong cyber judgment and can reason deeply about attacker behavior, emerging threats, abuse patterns, and ambiguous dual-use activity.
  • Have built or improved high-stakes operations, reviewer programs, QA systems, escalation workflows, or vendor/BPO programs-and can translate high-level strategy into execution.
  • Are highly analytical and can turn operational data into clear priorities, root-cause diagnoses, and measurable improvements.
  • Have a record of creating programs, workflows, or teams in ambiguous environments; you are a self-starter who creates structure and follows through.
  • Can influence across organizations, coach others, navigate disagreement, and bring people together across functions and levels.
  • Have exceptional executive presence and presentation skills; you can distill complex cyber risk into crisp recommendations, tradeoffs, and decisions for senior leaders.
  • Bring exceptional customer-service acumen: understand user and partner needs, communicate with empathy and precision, de-escalate sensitive situations, and balance safety with a high-quality experience.
  • Can translate complex cyber and policy judgment into reviewer-usable SOPs, decision trees, training, and concise written recommendations.
  • Exercise sound judgment and discretion when handling sensitive material.


About OpenAI

OpenAI is an artificial intelligence research laboratory consisting of the for-profit corporation OpenAI LP and its parent company, the non-profit OpenAI Inc. The company was founded in 2015 by a group of technology leaders, including Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, and John Schulman. OpenAI's mission is to develop and promote friendly AI for the betterment of humanity. The company has developed a number of cutting-edge AI technologies, including GPT-3, a language processing system that can generate human-like text. OpenAI has received funding from a number of high-profile investors, including LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and venture capitalist Peter Thiel.
Learn more about OpenAI
Size
100 employees
Industry
Founded
2015

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