Senior Employment Investigator

About This Team

OpenAI’s People team is committed to hiring, engaging, and supporting world-class talent to help safely build and deploy universally beneficial Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).

The Global Employee Relations, Employment Investigations, and People Standards team brings together expertise in employee relations, workplace investigations, and people policy and compliance. We play a critical role in shaping how OpenAI supports its people through complexity, growth, and change.

Our team guides and supports the company through some of its most nuanced and high-impact people challenges. We operate with deep context and care, balancing trust, judgment, and creativity in every situation. We don’t default to predefined frameworks. Instead, we take a principled yet flexible approach, designing thoughtful, tailored solutions that reflect our values, the needs of our employees, and the unique pace of OpenAI.

About This role

We’re looking for a Senior Employment Investigator to join our Employment Investigations team. This role reports to the Director of Employment Investigations and leads complex investigations into potential legal and policy violations, while also serving as a subject-matter expert on high-stakes employee relations matters. Drawing on your deep knowledge of employment law and strong investigative skills, you’ll handle sensitive issues with care and empathy and help foster a positive, respectful workplace culture.

You’ll have several responsibilities, including:

• Lead and conduct thorough, objective, and timely investigations into employee concerns, including allegations of misconduct, harassment, discrimination, and other policy violations across OpenAI’s global offices in the US, APAC, and EMEA.

• Execute investigations with rigor and adhere to gold standard practices, ensuring meticulous attention to detail and adherence to investigative best practices.

• Adhere to protocols for gathering and preserving information, documentation, and report writing.

• Provide deep employee relations expertise and guidance on a wide range of complex personnel issues, ensuring compliance with employment laws and company policies.

• Partner closely with Legal, HR, and other cross-functional teams to address and resolve high-stakes personnel matters, fostering a fair and consistent approach to resolving people issues.

• Develop and implement innovative employee relations strategies and initiatives that promote a positive work environment and align with OpenAI’s values and goals.

• Analyze employee relations data to diagnose, design, and revise People programs, policies, and practices, ensuring a fair and respectful workplace.

• Stay current on global trends, best practices, and changes in employment law to ensure compliance and proactive management of employee relations issues.

• Contribute to the continuous improvement of employee relations processes and tools, with a focus on innovation, efficiency, and out-of-the-box thinking.

We’ll look for these qualities, experience, and skills:

• A JD degree and 8+ years of experience as an employment or workplace investigations attorney, or in another in-house investigations role, or advising on complex employee relations issues. Equivalent experience as an employment attorney is also welcomed. Global employment law experience or AWI-CH designation is a plus.

• A proven track record of managing and advising on highly sensitive, nuanced employee relations issues, with expertise in managing and de-escalating highly charged matters.

• Exceptional analytical, written, and verbal communication skills, with the ability to clearly and effectively convey complex information and produce rigorous and legally defensible investigation reports.

• Outstanding interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence, enabling you to build trust, rapport, and influence with executives, senior leaders, management, and employees at all levels.

• A data-driven, proactive, and innovative mindset, with a dedication to continuous improvement and dynamic problem-solving.

• The capacity to thrive, adapt, and excel in a high-performance and rapidly changing work environment.

• Unwavering integrity and professionalism, with a commitment to maintaining confidentiality and handling sensitive information with the utmost discretion.

• Demonstrated empathy and the ability to think creatively and strategically in high-pressure situations.

About the Workplace & Job Location

This role is based in our San Francisco office and we aren't considering remote applications. We offer relocation support to new employees, and we use a hybrid work model: three days in the office per week with optional work from home on Thursdays and Fridays.

Our open-plan offices have height-adjustable desks, conference rooms, phone booths, well-stocked kitchens full of snacks and drinks, three in-house prepared meals daily, a private outdoor space for working in the sun or socializing, nap rooms, private bike storage, and more.

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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