Travel Operations Lead

About the Team

The Procurement organization enables our mission by ensuring every dollar is spent responsibly, compliantly, and efficiently. As a key part of this function, this role reports to the Head of Travel & Expense (T&E) and partners closely with Procurement Operations, Accounting, Finance, and business stakeholders to own and scale the company's global Events strategy, operations, and compliance.

About the Role

We are looking for a Travel Operations Lead to own and mature the operating model behind OpenAI's executive and employee travel programs. This role will be hands-on in executive travel support while also building the policies, supplier relationships, data, systems, and AI-enabled workflows that allow the program to scale with speed, confidentiality, safety, and control.

This person will oversee high-touch executive travel support, including complex commercial travel globally; manage travel agency and supplier performance; own the executive travel policy; and partner with Executive Business Partners to ensure travelers receive timely, high-quality support. The role will also own core employee travel operations, TMC support, on-the-road escalation management, executive travel reporting for tax and compliance purposes, and guest T&E programs.

What we're looking for:

We are looking for someone who understands the nuance of the travel industry and can operate at scale while continuously improving the system. This person will be hands-on in executive travel support and will own the policy, operation, supplier relationships, and support model that enable safe, efficient, and high-quality travel.

The right person will bring strong operational judgment, high attention to detail, and the ability to adjust policies, programs, and tools as OpenAI scales. They will also bring a practical vision for AI and agentic enablement across the travel support ecosystem, knowing where AI can reduce manual work, where human review matters, and how to build trust in new ways of working.

You bring:

• 7+ years of experience in travel, executive operations, expense, corporate cards, sourcing, finance operations, or a related T&E role.

• High AI fluency, with demonstrated ability to use AI tools to improve how work gets done, reduce manual effort, strengthen analysis, improve documentation, and create scalable operating leverage.

• Strong understanding of how the in-trip experience is affected by disruptions, destination risk, traveler context, supplier performance, policy design, booking quality, and support responsiveness.

• Ability to improve operational processes through better data, automation, workflow design, and exception-based ways of working.

• Strong systems understanding, with the ability to understand how data flows across procurement, travel, finance, tax, card, and reporting platforms.

• High attention to detail and a strong sense of ownership for data accuracy, completeness, confidentiality, and consistency.

• Ability to identify patterns in operational issues and translate them into better processes, standards, controls, and system improvements.

• Practical judgment around AI adoption, including where automation can accelerate work, where human review matters, and how to build trust with travelers and cross-functional partners.

• Comfort working across HR, Finance, Accounting, Procurement Operations, Tax, Legal, Security, Executive Business Partners, and business stakeholders.

• Clear communication skills and the ability to explain process requirements in a practical, enablement-focused way.

• Sound judgment when handling confidential executive travel information, sensitive traveler data, guest information, and supplier performance concerns.

• Ability to operate in ambiguity, bring structure to evolving processes, and raise the bar as volume and complexity increase.

Workplace & Location

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 executive travel operating model, including support workflows, escalation paths, SLA management, policy ownership, supplier coordination, and program governance.

• Lead high-touch executive travel support including complex commercial travel globally, balancing speed, confidentiality, safety, and experience.

• Manage the procurement process for executive travel, including supplier engagement, service expectations, documentation, spend visibility, and compliance with procurement and finance requirements.

• Own and continuously improve the executive travel policy, translating edge cases into clear standards, practical guardrails, and scalable approval paths.

• Partner with Executive Business Partners to optimize support, improve satisfaction, clarify handoffs, and ensure executives and travelers can travel safely and effectively.

• Oversee employee travel support related to TMC service delivery, on-the-road support, disruption management, traveler enablement, and recurring issue resolution.

• Own travel agency management for Navan and related program operations, including SLAs, KPIs, escalations, roadmap input, operational reviews, and continuous improvement.

• Manage the Guest T&E program for new hires, candidates, and other business guests, creating scalable rules, support workflows, payment paths, and exception handling.

• Build reporting and data routines for executive travel, tax, compliance, supplier performance, traveler experience, support volume, and operational risk.

• Use AI tools to improve travel support workflows, documentation, triage, analytics, policy interpretation, exception routing, and recurring issue detection.

• Partner cross-functionally with HR, Finance, Accounting, Procurement Operations, Tax, Legal, Security, Executive Business Partners, Recruiting, and business stakeholders.

• Build clear documentation, SOPs, program standards, and operating rhythms that make travel support easier, more consistent, and more transparent.

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Have worked on scaled travel programs and understand how global travel operations, supplier performance, policy, traveler experience, and data connect.

• Have experience in high-touch, highly confidential, and fast-changing environments where judgment, discretion, and service quality matter.

• Can set up program rules that scale with volume and complexity while preserving room for practical exception handling.

• Understand how disruptions, risk, routing, supplier behavior, traveler profiles, and support timing affect trip outcomes.

• Enjoy turning operational complexity into clear standards, better workflows, stronger controls, and smarter systems.

• Are already using AI tools to improve quality, speed, analysis, documentation, traveler support, or decision support.

• Can balance hands-on support with strategic program ownership and cross-functional influence.

• Bring an ownership mindset and are comfortable being accountable for sensitive, visible, and operationally complex work.

Compensation Range: $216K - $240K USD

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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