HR Business Partner

About this Team

The HR Business Partner (HRBP) team at OpenAI partners with leaders to navigate complex organizational and talent decisions where the right path is not always obvious. We are building a higher-leverage HRBP model: staying close enough to the business to understand its realities, while focusing our time on the work that requires judgment, influence, context, and leadership partnership.

This role is for an HRBP who can diagnose ambiguous situations, translate business strategy into organizational and talent decisions, coach leaders through consequential choices, and help build the operating rhythms that enable scale. While the role spans both strategic and operational work, the bar is not to be helpful on everything. The bar is to improve decision quality, strengthen leadership capability, and increase organizational effectiveness.

We operate with urgency, empathy, and sound judgment. We value sincerity, intellectual honesty, and collaboration over ego, and focus relentlessly on creating meaningful impact.

About this Role

This role is part of a shared hiring pathway for HRBPs at OpenAI. Instead of hiring directly for a single team, we evaluate candidates holistically first, then identify the best fit across our organization as you advance. This approach ensures alignment between your skills, interests, and where our needs are greatest—whether that’s partnering with technical leaders in engineering, supporting product teams driving user impact, or enabling operational excellence across business functions.

As a Senior HR Business Partner, you’ll be a trusted advisor to leaders and their teams. You’ll help set direction for how we organize, grow, and lead—stepping in as both a sounding board and a problem-solver. This role mixes strategic advising with hands-on support: you’ll design better systems, coach managers through complex situations, and help us make trade-offs that keep our people and mission in balance. This is an individual contributor role reporting to an HRBP Lead.

In this role, you will

• Shape high-performing, resilient teams: Partner with leaders to design structures, talent plans, and ways of working that enable strong performance and sustainable growth.

• Collaborate for a seamless experience: Partner with fellow HRBPs, COEs, and cross-functional leaders to build an employee experience rooted in humanity, humility, and impact.

• Evolve People programs: Strengthen performance, engagement, and retention processes—building solutions that are lightweight, scalable, and aligned with how OpenAI operates.

• Guide and develop managers: Offer candid, actionable feedback and help managers build leadership muscle across their teams.

• Anticipate and act fast: Stay close to the business to identify challenges early, diagnose root causes, and deliver lasting solutions that adapt as priorities shift.

• Lead change that matters: Drive organizational changes with empathy, clarity, and rigor—finding creative paths forward when playbooks don’t exist.

You might thrive in this role if you have

• Deep HRBP expertise: 7–10+ years of HR experience, including at least 5 years as an HR Business Partner in high-growth or complex environments.

• Strategic partnering: Able to see the big picture, guide leaders through tough trade-offs, and adapt quickly when priorities shift.

• Multipliers who create impact: Skilled at giving candid feedback with care and building leadership capabilities across organizations.

• Scrappy problem solving: Uses sound judgment to diagnose challenges, test creative solutions, and chart a path forward without a playbook.

• Change leadership with calm & clarity: Brings steadiness, empathy, and influence in moments of ambiguity or transition.

• High integrity: Known for discretion, fairness, and trustworthiness when the stakes are high.

Workplace & Location

This role is based in our San Francisco, New York, or Seattle office, and we aren’t considering remote applica