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 new products, workflows, tools, and deployment models that help philanthropy use AI with greater imagination, rigor, and reach.

We are seeking the Foundation's first product hire to help define and build the future of AI-native philanthropy. This person will turn large, ambiguous opportunities into practical systems: tools we use inside the Foundation, workflows that help teams make better decisions and move faster, and reusable products and open-source infrastructure that other donors can adopt.

We are looking for a seasoned product builder who has led important areas of work, operated with founder-level ownership, and is energized by zero-to-one problems where the path is not yet obvious. The strongest candidates may have built workflow products in complex domains such as healthcare, benefits, financial services, public-sector technology, or other environments where trust, compliance, and adoption matter as much as software quality. You will work across Foundation leadership, program teams, OpenAI product and technical partners, grantees, nonprofits, donors, and external builders to understand real needs, identify high-leverage opportunities, and ship useful products in complex real-world environments.

The role requires exceptional product judgment, strong technical fluency, comfort with ambiguity, and a bias toward getting working systems into users' hands. You should be able to move from a strategic question like "How can AI change how philanthropy helps solve some of the world's biggest problems?" to a prototype, pilot, measurement plan, adoption path, and eventual open-source release.

A central part of the work will be productizing AI-native philanthropy itself. Early focus areas may include grantmaking and diligence workflows, partner and grantee matching, knowledge management, portfolio learning, impact measurement, deployment operations, AI-assisted nonprofit workflows, and shared tools that help the broader philanthropic sector adopt frontier AI responsibly and effectively.

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

• Partner with Foundation leadership, grantmaking teams, and program teams to shape the future of AI-native philanthropy, bringing product thinking to questions of where AI can unlock new solutions, tools, and operating models for public benefit.
• Discover high-leverage user needs across Foundation staff, grantees, nonprofits, funders, and sector partners, with particular attention to workflows where AI can create step-change improvements rather than incremental efficiency.
• Translate messy, human-centered workflows into simple, trusted products that help donors make better decisions, coordinate across stakeholders, and act with greater speed and confidence.
• Build and iterate tools and workflows that the Foundation uses internally first, including systems for grantmaking, due diligence, partner matching, knowledge management, portfolio learning, impact measurement, and deployment operations.
• Identify which internal tools should become reusable products, open-source projects, reference implementations, playbooks, or shared infrastructure for the broader philanthropic and nonprofit sectors.
• Partner closely with engineers, designers, program leads, deployment teams, and external builders to scope, prototype, ship, evaluate, and scale AI-enabled products.
• Use frontier AI tools hands-on to prototype workflows, test product concepts, accelerate discovery, and model the operating practices we want to help the sector adopt.
• Develop adoption and support models that help other donors, philanthropies, and nonprofits successfully use the tools we build, including documentation, implementation guidance, training loops, and partner feedback systems.
• Establish product quality bars, evaluation methods, and responsible deployment practices appropriate for mission-driven organizations working with sensitive information, vulnerable populations, and high-trust relationships.
• Bring structure to ambiguous opportunities without over-bureaucratizing them, creating enough clarity for teams to move quickly and learn from real users.
• Serve as a trusted product thought partner to Foundation leadership and program teams, helping them apply product thinking to strategy, prioritization, ecosystem needs, and how to maximize the reach of OpenAI's unique assets for public benefit.

You'll thrive in this role if you

• Have 8+ years of product management or equivalent product-building experience, ideally including zero-to-one products, internal tools, enterprise workflows, developer tools, AI products, data platforms, or collaboration/productivity systems.
• Have operated at senior product scope, such as leading a significant product area, serving as a founding PM or first product hire, founding a company, or carrying broad accountability in a high-ambiguity environment.
• Have a proven track record of taking ambiguous problems, finding the right user and product insight, and shipping products or workflows that create measurable value.
• Have built products for complex operational domains where the work depends on human judgment, stakeholder coordination, regulatory or privacy constraints, and trust.
• Bring strong technical fluency, including the ability to work deeply with engineers, understand AI product constraints, assess feasibility, and make sound tradeoffs across quality, speed, privacy, safety, and adoption.
• Are unusually good at product discovery in messy human systems, including environments where users may not yet know what to ask for and where adoption depends on trust, workflow change, and organizational readiness.
• Can operate as a senior individual contributor with broad scope: setting direction, aligning stakeholders, writing clearly, driving execution, and holding a high bar without relying on formal authority.
• Have excellent product taste and systems judgment: you can tell when a tool should be a lightweight workflow, a robust internal system, an open-source project, a partnership, or something we should not build at all.
• Are comfortable moving between strategy and execution, from advising leaders on opportunity areas to writing a crisp product brief, testing a prototype, interviewing users, or debugging an adoption blocker.
• Communicate exceptionally well with technical and nontechnical audiences, including executives, program leaders, nonprofit operators, funders, engineers, and community partners.
• Bring curiosity, humility, and respect for the philanthropic and nonprofit sectors, paired with the imagination to help those sectors use AI in ways that are genuinely new.
• Are energized by the opportunity to help define what AI-native philanthropy can become.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building AI, applied AI, automation, data, workflow, developer, enterprise SaaS, or productivity products.
• Experience building tools for internal use and turning the best of them into external products, open-source projects, reference implementations, or platform capabilities.
• Experience deploying technology in complex organizational environments where success depends on adoption, trust, change management, and measurable outcomes.
• Experience building products in healthcare, benefits, payroll, financial services, education, government, compliance-heavy sectors, or other operational domains with high stakes for users.
• Experience with open-source communities, public-interest technology, civic technology, nonprofits, philanthropy, healthcare, education, economic opportunity, or other impact-oriented domains.
• Familiarity with grantmaking, impact measurement, knowledge management, program operations, or other workflows common in philanthropy and mission-driven organizations is a plus.
• Founder, founding PM, first product hire, incubation lead, senior PM, or product-area leadership experience.

Compensation

The annual base salary range for this role is $410,000 to $510,000.

This range reflects our good-faith estimate of the base salary we reasonably expect to pay for this position upon hire. Actual base salary will be determined based on job-related factors, including the candidate's relevant experience, skills, expertise, the scope of the role, and work location, as applicable.

This salary range does not include benefits or any other compensation for which the role may be eligible.