About the Team

In order to fulfill OpenAI’s ambitious technical mission, we must hire an incredibly talented, hard-working, mission-aligned, and diverse team. The Recruiting team at OpenAI works cross-functionally with all hiring managers throughout the organization to find and close incredible talent, provide an excellent candidate experience, and maintain our high hiring bar.

About the Role

As University Recruiting Lead, you will establish and spearhead our university recruiting initiatives. This role presents an exciting opportunity to build a robust university recruiting program from scratch, fostering enduring relationships with prestigious universities, and attracting the brightest emerging talent to OpenAI.

We are looking for a seasoned hands on leader who will establish the University recruiting vision and strategy for our next growth stage and see them through to exemplary execution. The ideal candidate will combine experience building and managing university recruitment strategies for high-performing tech organizations from scratch. You will play a key role in championing those values and acting as a culture carrier and change agent, inspiring confidence, motivation, and engagement from the organization and developing strong collaborative relationships to drive extraordinary results.

This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.

In this role, you will:

• Design, implement, and lead an extensive university recruiting strategy to attract top-tier early-career talent from national and international universities and colleges.
• Establish and nurture partnerships with key universities, faculty members, and student organizations, positioning OpenAI as the best employer of choice.
• Oversee the full-cycle university recruiting process, including campus engagement, interviews, offer management, and the coordination of internship programs.
• Organize and participate in university recruitment events, job fairs, and on-campus interviews, promoting our brand and opportunities to prospective candidates.
• Develop and sustain a strong internship program that provides meaningful experiences for interns and value to OpenAI.
• Monitor, analyze, and report on university recruiting metrics to continually evaluate and refine our recruiting strategies.
• Train and mentor team members involved in university recruiting efforts, ensuring a high level of competency and enthusiasm towards university recruiting.
• Partner with hiring leaders to develop a deep understanding of our business's current and future hiring needs and develop university recruitment strategies to fulfill those needs.
• Propose and run experiments to find novel techniques and solutions for challenging recruiting problems.

We’re looking for a blend of:

• 5+ years of experience in recruiting, with a focus on university recruiting
• Demonstrable success leading strategy and driving execution to hire top-tier talent for a premier tech company and/or high-growth startup, including hiring talent in extremely niche talent markets
• Strong leadership skills with a demonstrated ability to influence management and contributors at all levels of the organization and across functions
• A proactive leader with a strong track record in building high-functioning recruiting organizations
• Exemplary analytical, verbal / written communication, and interpersonal skills

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Are a strategist. You deeply understand recruiting best practices and have experience advocating for and implementing those practices, but you know when and how to customize practices to fit our organization’s needs best. You think and plan forward on the order of years.
• Are a people-person. You are energized by interacting with people and build deep cooperative relationships readily. You are inspired by helping people achieve their best work and enjoy coaching and developing others. You are deeply empathetic and understand how to incentivize people toward desired behaviors based on their unique motivations.
• Are a builder and a completionist. You not only embrace the opportunity to impact how a company operates directly, but you also revel in it. An organization relies on the quality of its foundation, and your passion is building strong systems and processes from the ground up and executing them with precision to completion.
• Are excited by new challenges. You don’t have the answers to every question up front, but the process of solving them invigorates you. Bespoke issues requiring multidimensional knowledge excite you. You’re willing to experiment with new solutions.
• Care deeply about diversity, equity, and inclusion. You understand why investing in DEI is a good business decision and why it’s vitally important to developing safe and universally beneficial AGI.
• Passion or deep curiosity in technology and artificial intelligence

We are an equal opportunity employer and do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability or any other legally protected status. Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link.

Compensation, Benefits and Perks

Total compensation also includes generous equity and benefits.

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance for you and your family
• Mental health and wellness support
• 401(k) plan with 4% matching
• Unlimited time off and 18+ company holidays per year
• Paid parental leave (20 weeks) and family-planning support
• Annual learning & development stipend ($1,500 per year)