Agent Standards Specialist, Global Affairs

Details

OpenAI's Global Affairs team builds collaborative relationships with public officials and the broader AI policymaking community. The team works with internal and external stakeholders to help shape policy and standards that support OpenAI's mission.

This role leads execution of OpenAI's external technical standards strategy for defined agent standards workstreams. As AI agents take action across the internet, standards covering identity, delegated authority, discovery, communications, agentic commerce and payment interfaces, agent-facing web access, provenance, and auditability will determine whether agents operate safely, interoperably, and with clear accountability.

The role works with Agent Security, Applied and Platform teams, Product, Legal, GRC, Global Affairs, and GTM to translate OpenAI's technical architecture and controls into specifications, protocol profiles, assurance criteria, and implementation guidance. It also brings emerging external requirements into product and security roadmaps. This is a technical standards position rather than a broad public-policy position.

The role owns workstream planning, standards translation, drafting, negotiation, external representation within approved mandates, commitment traceability, and implementation handoff. Security, Product, Engineering, and other designated technical teams retain ownership of architecture, threat models, controls, product decisions, approvals, and implementation.

Responsibilities

• Own a focused workstream plan for agent identity, discovery, and delegated-authorization standards, with adjacent work in agentic commerce, web access, provenance, and auditability assigned through portfolio prioritization.
• Recommend where OpenAI should lead, shape, monitor, oppose, or decline to participate based on technical maturity, governance quality, strategic leverage, implementation readiness, and company priorities.
• Develop technical standards positions and normative contributions that distinguish among the human or service principal, agent, workload or runtime, task, session, resource, and policy decision.
• Shape requirements for scoped delegation, attenuation, step-up approval, revocation, credential custody, runtime binding, discovery, interoperability, agent-specific provenance, and auditable action trails.
• Work with Agent Security and Applied or Platform teams to translate internal architecture and controls into specifications, profiles, white papers, and assurance evidence without overstating maturity or deployment status.
• Lead review and approval paths across Product, Security, Engineering, Legal, GRC, Global Affairs, and GTM, maintaining clear mandates, red lines, owners, dependencies, and external commitments.
• Represent OpenAI in priority venues and coalitions, including IETF and OAuth-related work, FIDO, OIDF, W3C, AAIF, and relevant NIST or ISO efforts.
• Build trust with peer companies, standards operators, and public-sector stakeholders.
• Bring external standards intelligence into product, security, compliance, and go-to-market decisions early enough to shape roadmaps and avoid retrofit, launch, procurement, or market-access friction.
• Create reusable playbooks, decision records, contribution patterns, and handoffs that reduce key-person risk.

Requirements

• Strong experience in technical standards, internet protocols, identity and access, security architecture, applied cryptography, or closely related product or infrastructure work.
• Experience authoring, editing, or materially shaping normative specifications, profiles, drafts, or conformance requirements in technical standards or open-source governance settings.
• Ability to reason about OAuth and OIDC, FIDO or WebAuth, workload identity, HTTP signatures, delegated authority, credential lifecycle, revocation, provenance, and auditability.
• Understanding that agent trust is a composed stack rather than a single credential, including the distinctions among principal, agent, runtime, task, session, resource, and policy claims.
• Ability to distinguish adopted standards, stable extensions, active drafts, working-group proposals, and exploratory ideas, and to adjust organizational posture accordingly.
• Ability to earn trust with engineers and security leaders while communicating clearly with lawyers, product leaders, executives, policymakers, and external standards participants.
• Strong judgment in ambiguous, high-stakes environments, including knowing when to lead, compromise, oppose, escalate, or withdraw.
• Clear writing, constructive negotiation, and comfort representing OpenAI externally with discretion.

Benefits

• Equity, performance-related bonuses for eligible employees, and benefits including medical, dental, and vision insurance.
• Employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts and access to pre-tax FSA, dependent-care FSA, and commuter accounts.
• 401(k) retirement plan with employer match.
• Paid parental, medical, and caregiver leave.
• Paid time off, paid company holidays, office closures, and paid sick or safe time as required by law.
• Mental health and wellness support.
• Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage.
• Annual learning and development stipend.
• Daily office meals and eligible meal delivery credits.
• Relocation support for eligible employees.
• Additional taxable fringe benefits may include charitable donation matching and wellness stipends.

OpenAI is an equal opportunity employer and provides reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities.