Cyber Operations Lead, Critical Harm Operations

Details

About the Team

Critical Harm Operations sits within User Safety & Risk Operations and builds enforcement systems for the most severe user-safety risks, including Frontier Risk and Material Harm. The Cyber vertical turns policy into reviewer standards, calibrated judgment, quality systems, escalation paths, and safe automation.

About the Role

OpenAI is seeking a senior cybersecurity and cyber intelligence practitioner who is also an operations leader, strategist, and people manager. The role combines senior individual-contributor depth with direct people-management accountability. Responsibilities include shaping complex cyber judgments, operating models, SOPs, quality systems, and automation strategies while building, coaching, and managing a high-performing team.

The role also requires leading through influence across full-time employees, BPO partners, and cross-functional teams. Success includes improving decision quality, stakeholder alignment, reviewer capability, and the systems that run the operation, in addition to maintaining operational health across quality, queue coverage, productivity, and SLA adherence.

This role is based in San Francisco, California, and follows a hybrid work model with three days in the office per week.

Responsibilities

• Set the strategic direction for Cyber Operations and translate organizational priorities into an operating model, roadmaps, SOPs, escalation paths, quality goals, and safe-access strategies.
• Serve as the senior cybersecurity and cyber intelligence expert for complex, high-risk decisions across ChatGPT, API, Codex, agents, and emerging product surfaces.
• Build trust, create clarity, navigate disagreement, and move people through ambiguity across employees, BPO partners, and cross-functional teams.
• Convert policy ambiguity, quality misses, appeals, and reviewer disagreement into decision rules, calibration examples, training, and tooling requirements.
• Build and scale reviewer capability through onboarding, certification, coaching, feedback, recurring calibration, and 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.
• Use analysis and automation to diagnose root causes, surface risk, prioritize high-leverage fixes, and reduce manual effort.
• Build quality and evaluation systems that improve decision quality through calibration, adjudication, monitoring, and feedback loops.
• Build new operational capabilities from 0 to 1 and scale them by defining problems, aligning partners, testing models, establishing metrics, and creating repeatable operations.
• Present recommendations, tradeoffs, and operational strategy to executives and internal and external partners, and represent Cyber Operations in high-stakes discussions and launch decisions.

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience in cybersecurity, cyber intelligence, threat intelligence, incident response, security research, or a related field.
• 4+ years of experience leading teams.
• Experience building and scaling a cyber operations, cyber intelligence, or abuse-prevention capability across regions, products, or a large user base.
• Experience designing and launching human-in-the-loop automation or evaluation systems that improved safety, quality, or operational scale.
• Strong cyber judgment and the ability to reason about attacker behavior, emerging threats, abuse patterns, and ambiguous dual-use activity.
• Experience building or improving high-stakes operations, reviewer programs, QA systems, escalation workflows, or vendor/BPO programs.
• Strong analytical skills and the ability to turn operational data into priorities, root-cause diagnoses, and measurable improvements.
• A record of creating programs, workflows, or teams in ambiguous environments.
• Ability to influence across organizations, coach others, navigate disagreement, and collaborate across functions and levels.
• Exceptional executive presence and presentation skills, including the ability to distill complex cyber risk into recommendations, tradeoffs, and decisions for senior leaders.
• Customer-service acumen, including understanding user and partner needs, communicating with empathy and precision, de-escalating sensitive situations, and balancing safety with user experience.
• Ability to translate complex cyber and policy judgment into reviewer-usable SOPs, decision trees, training, and concise written recommendations.
• Sound judgment and discretion when handling sensitive material.

Benefits

• Base salary of $252,000–$335,000 per year, plus equity.
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance, with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts.
• Pre-tax accounts for health, dependent care, and commuter expenses.
• 401(k) retirement plan with employer match.
• Paid parental, medical, and caregiver leave.
• Paid time off, company holidays, office closures, and paid sick or safe time as applicable.
• 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 benefits may include charitable donation matching and wellness stipends.