Head of Enterprise Risk Management

About the Team

The OpenAI Risk & Audit team is building an enterprise risk capability for a company operating at the frontier of AI. We help leaders identify, understand, and manage the risks that matter most while enabling responsible innovation and durable growth.

We are developing a modern enterprise risk management (ERM) program and the technology foundation that powers it. Our work connects risk strategy, governance, compliance, and assurance with high-quality data, automated workflows, continuous monitoring, and AI-enabled analysis.

We partner across Finance, Security, Legal, Engineering, Product, People, Operations, and Internal Audit, and provide clear reporting to senior leadership and the Board. We aim to make risk ownership practical, decision-useful, and embedded in how OpenAI builds and scales.

About the Role

As the Head of Enterprise Risk Management, you will help build and lead an integrated ERM program and the ERM platform that supports it. You will establish common risk language, governance, and decision processes while translating them into scalable systems, data products, and workflows.

You will own enterprise risk assessments, maintain a centralized risk register, develop risk appetite and key risk indicators, and help leaders evaluate significant changes such as new products, markets, partnerships, major systems, and strategic investments.

This is a senior individual contributor role for a hands-on leader who will build our ERM capability from the ground up, with the potential to build and lead a team over time. You will work with technical and business teams to connect source systems, improve data quality, automate evidence and control monitoring, and use AI to surface emerging risks and accelerate analysis.

You will also help create a strong risk culture, coordinate assurance across the three lines, and communicate complex issues with clarity and sound judgment. This is an opportunity to build a next-generation capability from the ground up.

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 and evolve OpenAI’s enterprise risk management framework, including risk taxonomy, governance standards, risk appetite, escalation thresholds, and mitigation expectations.

• Lead enterprise risk assessments and maintain a centralized, decision-useful risk register that reflects strategic, financial, operational, technology, security, compliance, and emerging risks.

• Establish key risk indicators, continuous-monitoring capabilities, and executive dashboards that translate complex data into clear signals, trends, and actions.

• Enable risk-informed change governance for new products, markets, partnerships, acquisitions, major systems, and other high-impact initiatives.

• Lead effective governance forums working cross-functionally with key partners such as Compliance, Finance, Security and others, and prepare concise reporting for senior leadership and the Board.

• Define the strategy and roadmap for a modern ERM platform that will connect with systems across the enterprise including identity, finance, HR, ticketing, code, and others through reliable integrations and shared data models.

• Apply automation, policy-as-code, data analytics, and AI-assisted workflows to evidence collection, control monitoring, issue management, risk analysis, and audit or regulatory responses.

• Coordinate risk activities across Finance, Security, Legal, Compliance, Engineering, Operations, and Internal Audit, clarifying ownership and reducing duplication across the three lines of defense.

• Build, coach, and lead a high-performing team, strengthen first-line ownership, and foster a culture of practical risk management, curiosity, accountability, and continuous improvement.

You might thrive in this role if you have:

• 12+ years of experience across enterprise or operational risk, compliance, internal audit, security governance, finance, or related fields, including significant experience leading ERM or GRC programs.

• A track record of building or materially scaling an enterprise risk program in a fast-growing, technology-driven, or otherwise complex global organization.

• Strong command of ERM and assurance practices, including risk appetite, risk assessments, KRIs, controls, issue management, and the three-lines model; familiarity with frameworks such as COSO or ISO/IEC 27001/27017/27018/27701/42001.

• Experience advising executives and presenting risk information to senior governance bodies, with the judgment to make complex tradeoffs clear and actionable.

• Technical fluency with GRC platforms, data architecture, APIs, system integrations, cloud environments, and automated workflows; experience with infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD, or policy-as-code is a plus.

• Experience using data analytics, automation, or AI-enabled tools to improve risk sensing, evidence analysis, control monitoring, and reporting.

• The ability to connect strategic, financial, operational, technology, security, and compliance risks and to work effectively across technical and non-technical teams.

• Demonstrated success hiring, coaching, and developing multidisciplinary teams while operating effectively in ambiguity and at high velocity.

• A relevant bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience; credentials such as CIA, CPA, CISA, CRMA, CRM, or an advanced business, legal, or technical degree are valued.

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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