About the role

Frontier AI must benefit all of humanity. To make that real, the OpenAI Foundation will need more than capital: it will need world-class product, engineering, design, and deployment leadership capable of turning ambitious ideas into durable systems, tools, partnerships, and measurable outcomes.

We are seeking a Head of Product and Engineering to lead the Civil Society Division's technical strategy and build the product and engineering engine through which we deploy AI for public benefit. This person will be a key leader at a new, highly ambitious foundation where technical judgment will directly shape how one of the largest philanthropic portfolios is deployed for measurable public benefit.

This role requires a rare combination: a GM-scale operator who has owned major organizational outcomes and a product and engineering executive who has led world-class technical teams. This combination matters because the role is not only setting AI deployment strategy; it is stewarding technical outcomes across a large portfolio and building the institution, team, and technical engine to convert capital and AI capability into durable social impact.

The Head of Product and Engineering will be accountable for technical deployment outcomes across every delivery channel: internal teams, OpenAI volunteers, Fellows, external implementation partners, and priority grantees. They will allocate scarce technical capacity to the highest-leverage opportunities, ensure each deployment has a credible path to impact, and hold teams accountable for implementation quality and measurable outcomes.

A central part of this work will be productizing AI-native philanthropy itself: building the internal tools, workflows, data systems, evaluation approaches, and deployment models that allow the Foundation to allocate capital and technical talent with unusual leverage. The role will also help develop sectoral AI tools and shared infrastructure that can benefit many organizations, rather than only supporting one-off projects.

This role is based in San Francisco. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week.

In this role, you will

• Lead the Civil Society Division's product and engineering strategy, setting the technical standards, prioritization frameworks, and deployment models that translate the mission of ensuring AGI benefits all of humanity into measurable portfolio outcomes.
• Decide when to build, buy, fund, partner, or direct external resources, and create the partnership models needed to scale technical impact beyond the internal team.
• Partner closely with Foundation leadership to identify where frontier AI can create step-change impact on major social problems, including assessing user needs, organizational readiness, technical feasibility, data availability, implementation risk, and potential return on investment.
• Build and lead a world-class AI product, engineering, design, and deployment organization capable of operating across strategy, prototyping, technical implementation, partner support, and evaluation.
• Own the technical deployment portfolio and outcomes, including the governance, metrics, quality bar, and accountability mechanisms to ensure internal teams, fellows, volunteers, external partners, and grantees deliver measurable impact.
• Lead the productization of AI-native philanthropy, including internal tools and systems for grantmaking, partner matching, knowledge management, due diligence, impact measurement, portfolio learning, and deployment operations.
• Identify opportunities to build reusable AI tools, platforms, reference implementations, or shared infrastructure for priority sectors.
• Serve as a senior technical and product thought partner to nonprofits, funders, and sector leaders, helping them expand their understanding of what is possible with frontier AI and convert ambition into concrete, responsible implementation plans.
• Build from scratch in a startup-like environment, bringing structure where needed while preserving speed, creativity, and a high tolerance for ambiguity.

You'll thrive in this role if you

• Have led world-class multidisciplinary technical teams that include engineering, product, design, and data at scale working on complex technical products.
• Bring strong technical judgment, including the ability to evaluate AI product opportunities, pressure-test implementation plans, assess technical talent and vendors, and set a high bar for engineering quality.
• Have operated as an executive in a high-growth, high-ambiguity environment where you were accountable for building teams, systems, and strategy from the ground up.
• Have successfully been accountable for large ($500M+) P&Ls and scaled product/platform outcomes, with responsibility for allocating resources against measurable financial, product, or impact returns.
• Have founded an organization that scaled into a durable, high-impact institution
• Bring agility with AI tools and applications as a founder, product leader, or applied AI implementer
• Can move fluidly between strategy and execution: from advising senior leaders on global priorities to helping a team scope a first prototype or make a hard tradeoff.
• Bring exceptional product judgment: the ability to translate complex human needs, organizational constraints, technical feasibility, and economic tradeoffs into scalable products, workflows, and operating models.
• Have a proven track record deploying in emerging and heavily regulated developed markets where trust and adoption decide success.
• Have experience in nonprofit, philanthropic, public-interest technology, healthcare, or other impact-oriented and heavily regulated domains.
• Are an outstanding people leader who can attract, develop, and retain exceptional technical talent while creating a culture of rigor, humility, speed, and mission orientation.
• Are comfortable holding internal and external teams accountable for outcomes without losing the collaborative posture required to build trust across sectors.
• Excellent communicator with board-level and executive-level stakeholders, technical and nontechnical audiences, and community stakeholders.
• Are energized by the opportunity to help define what AI-native philanthropy can become.

Preferred qualifications

• 15+ years of experience across product, engineering, applied AI, technology leadership, or adjacent technical domains.
• Executive-level leadership of product and engineering teams, ideally including experience managing senior product, engineering, design, data, or deployment leaders at a public company or $10B+ annual revenue organization.
• Accountability for board-reviewed outcome metrics.
• Demonstrated success building new organizations, products, platforms, or operating models from zero to one and scaling them sustainably across multiple geographies.
• Experience deploying technology in complex real-world environments where success depends on adoption, workflow change, trust, and measurable outcomes.
• Direct experience with AI/ML, LLMs, applied AI products, data infrastructure, developer platforms, or enterprise technology deployment.
• Experience launching and scaling inside nonprofits, philanthropy, public institutions, or mission-driven organizations.