OpenAI

Vendor Security Technical Program Manager

OpenAI • $120K — $150K *
US-AnywhereRemote in United States
Information Technology
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 5-7 years of experience in vendor security or related fields
  • Strong understanding of security principles and controls
  • Familiarity with frameworks like ISO 27001, NIST 800-53, and SOC 2
  • Proven ability to translate security findings into contractual terms
  • Experience with AI-assisted development tools like Codex
  • Demonstrated success in delivering cross-functional programs
  • Excellent communication skills for complex security issues

Responsibilities

  • Lead vendor security engagements from assessment to reassessment
  • Analyze vendor use cases, workflows, and data flows
  • Evaluate architectures and operational practices for security gaps
  • Develop and implement practical security treatments
  • Create reusable security patterns with clear guidelines
  • Collaborate with Legal and Procurement on security addenda
  • Define requirements and success measures for security programs
  • Drive delivery across Security and partner teams

Benefits

  • Flexible work environment
  • Opportunities for professional development
  • Collaborative team culture
  • Access to cutting-edge technology and tools
  • Health and wellness programs
Full Job Description
About the Role

We are looking for a Vendor Security Technical Program Manager who can make sound security decisions and turn recurring vendor-security problems into tools and practices that work.

You will independently lead vendor-security engagements: understand the business need, investigate the actual data and access, recommend a practical path, and work with the responsible owners until the safeguards are verified. You will also use what you learn to build and improve bounded tools and workflows, with priorities agreed with the Vendor Security lead.

This is an individual-contributor role for someone who combines technical judgment with useful delivery. You should be comfortable taking a position, explaining the tradeoff, and changing your mind when the evidence changes. Success means internal teams can use vendors securely, reuse work that still applies, and understand what needs to happen next.

In this role, you will:
  • Own vendor security engagements from understanding the business need through scoping, assessment, decision, treatment, and reassessment when material facts change. Make assessment decisions independently and use judgment about when to involve peers, specialists, or leadership. Route formal exceptions and risk acceptance to the appropriate decision owners.
  • Understand vendor use cases, workflows, user journeys, data flows, identities, access, integrations, and supply-chain dependencies. Identify plausible attack paths and their consequences for OpenAI.
  • Assess relevant architectures, configurations, controls, logs, and operational practices. Test whether the evidence supports the security claims that matter to the engagement, and make gaps and uncertainty clear.
  • Develop practical treatments, including changes to the operating model, data exposure, access, architecture, vendor choice, controls, or containment. Drive implementation with the responsible owners and verify that the treatment works.
  • Build reusable security patterns with clear applicability, safeguards, evidence requirements, exceptions, and review triggers.
  • Work with Legal, Procurement, and vendors on security addenda. Evaluate proposed terms and deviations against the engagement, explain their security implications, and develop workable positions with the appropriate decision owners. Legal leads wording and negotiation.
  • Learn from internal customers, agree priorities with the Vendor Security lead, and define the requirements, roadmap, and success measures for the bounded programs, products, and services you own.
  • Use Codex or comparable AI-assisted tools to build, inspect, test, and maintain practical improvements to scoping, evidence checks, routing, decision reuse, or treatment tracking. Investigate failures and own the result through adoption, continued operation, and explicit handoff or retirement.
  • Lead delivery across Security and partner teams. Translate goals into technical requirements, milestones, and delivery plans; influence implementation choices; identify systemic risks; resolve dependencies and disagreements; and carry commitments through completion.
  • Use casework, incidents, threat information, and customer feedback to improve decisions and the program. As priorities change, recommend what to do next and explain the tradeoffs and effects on existing commitments.

You might thrive in this role if you:
  • Have independently assessed consequential third-party, supply-chain, or comparable security risks, and can apply that judgment to unfamiliar vendor technologies and operating models.
  • Understand security principles and controls, including data protection, access management, application security, prevention, detection, and response. Can reason about architecture, identity, APIs, data flows, logging, integrations, and whether controls work.
  • Know relevant frameworks and standards, including ISO 27001, NIST 800-53, and SOC 2, and can use them to inform an assessment of the actual engagement.
  • Have translated security findings and requirements into practical contractual positions with Legal, Procurement, and vendor representatives.
  • Have delivered useful products or workflow improvements, tested expected behavior and failure cases, learned from users, and owned performance after launch.
  • Can use Codex or comparable AI-assisted development tools to build, run, inspect, and test working solutions.
  • Have independently delivered cross-functional programs, turned ambiguity into technical requirements and plans, and adapted priorities to achieve measurable outcomes. Can judge when to build, use existing systems, or engage partners to resolve blockers.
  • Build constructive relationships with Security, Engineering, Product, Privacy, Legal, business teams, and vendors. Communicate complex security issues clearly in writing and conversation, including your recommendation, supporting evidence, and relevant tradeoffs.
  • Question assumptions, try thoughtful new approaches, investigate unfamiliar systems, and revise your judgment when new evidence changes the situation.


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

Similar Jobs

More Jobs at OpenAI

More Information Technology Jobs

Find similar Vendor Security Technical Program Manager jobs: