Associate General Counsel, Hardware Commercial

About the Team

OpenAI’s Legal team plays a crucial role in advancing our mission by tackling innovative and fundamental legal issues in AI. The team includes professionals from diverse legal fields—technology, AI, infrastructure, privacy, IP, corporate, employment, tax, regulatory, and litigation—who collaborate closely with colleagues across the company.

If you are passionate about being a technology lawyer working on cutting-edge challenges, you’ll thrive here.

About the Role

We’re seeking a senior lawyer to lead commercial legal strategy and execution across OpenAI’s fast-growing hardware portfolio. This is a cross-functional role that will partner closely with procurement, supply chain, partnerships, finance, and product teams to structure, negotiate, and manage the transactions that will support OpenAI’s long-term hardware ambitions.

We’re looking for an experienced technology transactions lawyer who thrives in ambiguity and wants to help define the commercial playbook for frontier hardware systems in the AI era. This role reports to our Deputy General Counsel.

This role will be based in San Francisco, CA.

This role will:

• Own commercial legal strategy and risk management for OpenAI’s hardware transactions.

• Draft, negotiate, and advise on complex agreements with hardware suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and technology partners.

• Support strategic partnerships involving AI devices and hardware supply chains.

• Develop frameworks for procurement, licensing, and collaboration across the hardware ecosystem.

• Partner with finance and operations teams to align contract terms with business and compliance requirements.

• Collaborate with policy and regulatory colleagues on issues impacting global supply chains, export controls, and manufacturing.

• Build scalable, efficient contracting processes that support OpenAI’s hardware development at speed while managing risk.

You might thrive in this role if you:

• 10+ years of legal experience, with substantial focus on technology transactions and commercial contracting.

• A mix of in-house and top-tier law firm experience.

• Expertise negotiating agreements in the hardware, devices, or robotics domains.

• Familiarity with global supply chains, export controls, and manufacturing regulations.

• Demonstrated ability to operate with autonomy and sound judgment in highly technical and fast-moving environments.

• Exceptional communication skills, with an ability to distill complexity into actionable, business-aligned guidance.

• Experience advising on cross-border deals and global regulatory frameworks.

• Prior experience with IP licensing, supply agreements, joint ventures, or other complex commercial deals in hardware industries is a strong 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.

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with applicable law, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act. 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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