Product Policy - Data Scientist

The Product Research team partners closely with Product Management, Design, Engineering, and Policy to ensure OpenAI builds products that are useful, usable, and responsible. We help teams understand user needs, evaluate product concepts, and validate experiences across the full product lifecycle—from early exploration through launch and iteration.

Our work directly informs how OpenAI’s products evolve, ensuring that we deliver experiences that meet real-world needs while upholding OpenAI’s mission to ensure AI benefits all of humanity.

As a Product Policy - Data Scientist, you will design and lead high-impact research that shapes OpenAI’s product strategy and user experience. You’ll work across multiple product teams to generate insights that influence product decisions, inform design direction, and improve how people interact with AI.

You will own research from start to finish—partnering with stakeholders to define the right questions, choosing the best methods, executing studies, and turning findings into clear, actionable recommendations. This role requires someone who can balance rigor with speed, bring clarity to ambiguity, and confidently influence cross-functional partners at all levels.

This role is based in the San Francisco Bay Area and requires being in the office three days per week to collaborate closely with cross-functional partners.

• Partner with product managers, designers, and engineers to identify and prioritize research opportunities that improve product decisions and user experience

• Design and execute high-quality qualitative and quantitative research across all stages of product development, including foundational research, concept testing, prototyping, and usability testing

• Lead end-to-end research projects, from scoping and study design through recruitment, fieldwork, analysis, and reporting

• Translate complex research findings into clear, compelling insights that inform product strategy and design direction

• Present findings and recommendations to senior leadership and key stakeholders

• Balance rigor and speed by adapting methods to timelines while maintaining high standards for data quality and validity

• 7+ years of experience in user experience research, market research, or a related field

• Deep expertise in mixed-methods research, with strong qualitative skills and the ability to conduct and analyze quantitative studies at scale

• Proven experience leading research that has shaped product or design decisions

• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to influence across disciplines and levels

• Experience working with senior stakeholders and cross-functional teams

• Experience with advanced quantitative methods (e.g., MaxDiff, conjoint, segmentation)

• Experience working with executive audiences or large enterprise clients

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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