Global Payroll Operations Lead

About the Team

OpenAI Finance is responsible for ensuring the organization is set up for success in pursuit of its mission.

At its core, OpenAI’s Payroll team is responsible for timely and accurate processing of payroll and ensuring compliance with all statutory regulations.

About the Role

At OpenAI, payroll is not a back-office function — it is mission-critical infrastructure. We are seeking a Global Payroll Operations Lead to own, scale, and continuously improve the payroll and payroll-support ecosystem that serves one of the fastest-growing and most technically sophisticated organizations in the world.

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:

• Own the end-to-end execution of global payroll processing and deliver accurate, compliant, and on-time payroll results across multiple regions, entities, and pay frequencies.

• Build, lead, and continuously develop a world-class payroll operations organization, including both internal teams and outsourced partners, setting a high bar for performance, accountability, and operational excellence.

• Act as the operational authority for payroll, accountable for the integrity of all employee pay data across multiple systems.

• Serve as the payroll lead for mergers and acquisitions, including transition payrolls, compliance, and system administration.

• Proactively identify, investigate, and resolve payroll issues, applying strong judgment and root-cause analysis to eliminate recurrence and reduce operational risk.

• Design and build OpenAI’s payroll support operating model, including case workflows, intake channels, escalation paths, service-level agreements, and quality standards, delivering a high-trust employee payroll experience.

• Build strategic partnerships with HR, Finance, Accounting, and other cross-functional teams to ensure global data integrity and accurate downstream reporting.

• Build and maintain a robust control environment, including process documentation, approvals, reconciliations, and audit-ready evidence to support internal and external reviews.

• Continuously re-architect payroll workflows using automation and AI-powered tools to drive improvements in speed, accuracy, efficiency, and scalability.

You might thrive in this role if you have:

• 10+ years of experience leading global payroll operations, preferably in a fast-paced and high-growth environment.

• Strong working knowledge of global payroll regulations, tax requirements, and standard payroll practices with an expert level understanding of US federal, state, and local payroll compliance.

• Hands-on experience with Workday or other large HCM/payroll systems; ADP SmartCompliance and global payroll platform experience is a plus.

• The ability to autonomously manage multiple strategic priorities simultaneously, taking full ownership of outcomes, and delivering high-quality work under tight deadlines.

• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with excellent attention to detail.

• Clear and concise communication skills, with the ability to partner effectively with internal and external stakeholders.

• Experience working with or managing BPO/vendor relationships is strongly preferred.

• Bachelor's degree in Finance, Accounting, HR, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience. CPP certification is a plus.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity. 

We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.

Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

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