Recruiting Optimization Manager

Job Title: Recruiting Optimization Manager

Location: San Francisco

Department: People

Job Type: Full time

Work Arrangement: Hybrid

Compensation

$216K – $240K • Offers Equity

The base pay offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factors, including market location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. If the role is non-exempt, overtime pay will be provided consistent with applicable laws. In addition to the salary range listed above, total compensation also includes generous equity, performance-related bonus(es) for eligible employees, and the following benefits.

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance for you and your family, with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts

• Pre-tax accounts for Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and commuter expenses (parking and transit)

• 401(k) retirement plan with employer match

• Paid parental leave (up to 24 weeks for birth parents and 20 weeks for non-birthing parents), plus paid medical and caregiver leave (up to 8 weeks)

• Paid time off: flexible PTO for exempt employees and up to 15 days annually for non-exempt employees

• 13+ paid company holidays, and multiple paid coordinated company office closures throughout the year for focus and recharge, plus paid sick or safe time (1 hour per 30 hours worked, or more, as required by applicable state or local law)

• Mental health and wellness support

• Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage

• Annual learning and development stipend to fuel your professional growth

• Daily meals in our offices, and meal delivery credits as eligible

• Relocation support for eligible employees

• Additional taxable fringe benefits, such as charitable donation matching and wellness stipends, may also be provided.

More details about our benefits are available to candidates during the hiring process.

This role is at-will and OpenAI reserves the right to modify base pay and other compensation components at any time based on individual performance, team or company results, or market conditions.

About the 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 Recruiting Optimizations Manager is responsible for building and strengthening the systems, workflows, and operational infrastructure that make hiring at OpenAI fast, rigorous, and scalable. This role partners across recruiting, systems, and people teams to ensure recruiting foundations are efficient, reliable, auditable, and built to scale as OpenAI continues to grow rapidly and globally.

This role leads Recruiting Operations optimization efforts across workflow design, operational automation, systems enablement, and scalable service operations.

About the Role

This role is focused on the systems and operational backbone of recruiting. The Recruiting Operations Manager will lead work across recruiting systems, workflow design, automation, process optimization, and data integrity to improve how hiring runs at scale.

This role will translate business needs into durable operational solutions, drive improvements across the recruiting technology stack, and identify opportunities to reduce manual work through better tooling, automation, and process design. The right person will combine strong people management with systems thinking, operational rigor, and a practical approach to scaling high-quality recruiting infrastructure.

This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We are not considering remote candidates at this time.

In this role, you will:

• Lead and develop a high-performing Recruiting Operations team, setting clear expectations, building strong judgment, and supporting career growth.

• Own and improve the operational systems and workflows that underpin recruiting, with a focus on scalability, reliability, and efficiency.

• Design, implement, and continuously optimize automations across recruiting workflows, approvals, data quality checks, reporting processes, and systems handoffs.

• Identify manual, repetitive, or error-prone work and convert it into streamlined, governed, and scalable processes.

• Partner with Recruiting, People Systems, and cross-functional stakeholders to prioritize and deliver tooling improvements, workflow redesigns, and operational enhancements.

• Support the evolution of the recruiting technology stack by defining requirements, evaluating solutions, improving integrations, and driving adoption of new processes and tools.

• Use data to monitor process health, identify bottlenecks, and drive continuous improvement across operational performance and system effectiveness.

• Raise the bar on data accuracy, systems hygiene, documentation, and process discipline across recruiting operations.

• Act as an escalation point for complex operational issues, using structured problem-solving and sound judgment to resolve root causes.

• Contribute to an AI-enabled roadmap for recruiting operations, with a focus on practical automation, usability, governance, and measurable impact.

You might thrive in this role if:

• You care deeply about building reliable systems and operational foundations that scale.

• You naturally look for ways to simplify, automate, and optimize workflows rather than maintain manual workarounds.

• You are comfortable operating in ambiguity and can bring structure to evolving processes and systems.

• You know how to lead a team through both day-to-day execution and longer-term systems improvement.

• You bring strong judgment and know when to escalate risks, challenge unclear requirements, or tighten a process that is not holding up.

• You balance speed with rigor and understand that operational quality is a trust function.

• You can zoom out to design scalable workflows and zoom in to debug process failures, systems gaps, or data issues.

• You are credible with stakeholders and able to build strong working relationships across recruiting, systems, analytics, finance, legal, and IT.

What We’re Looking For:

• 8+ years of experience in recruiting operations, talent operations, people systems, or similar operational environments, with prior people management experience.

• Experience leading teams in fast-paced, high-growth environments with a strong focus on systems, process improvement, and operational execution.

• Strong operational design and process optimization skills, with experience scaling recruiting workflows and infrastructure.

• Demonstrated experience building or driving workflow automations, tooling enhancements, systems improvements, or operational redesigns in recruiting or related environments.

• Comfort working across ATS, workflow, integration, and support tooling; experience with platforms such as Ashby, Workday, Guide, or similar systems is a plus.

• Experience using metrics, service levels, and operational reviews to manage performance and uncover opportunities for optimization and automation.

• Strong cross-functional partnership skills, especially with Recruiting, People Systems, Analytics, Finance, Legal, and IT.

• Excellent judgment, prioritization, communication, and attention to detail in high-stakes environments.

• Interest in AI-enabled operations, with a pragmatic approach to adopting new tools and workflows.

Compensation Range: $216K - $240K USD