Safety Response Operations Lead

Compensation

The base pay offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factors, including market location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. The salary range for this role is $252K – $280K, with generous equity, performance-related bonus(es) for eligible employees, and the following benefits.

Benefits include:

• 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.

About the Team

The Global Safety Response Operations team provides 24/7 coverage for user safety, risk, and regulatory escalations across OpenAI’s products, handling the highest-priority cases that require human judgment and rapid response. The team operates as the core escalation and delivery arm of OpenAI’s safety operations, ensuring that our products remain safe and aligned with policy while enabling timely, empathetic, and consistent user support.

About the Role

The Global Safety Response Operations Lead is a hands-on team lead who both manages a regional Safety Response team and personally handles high-risk safety cases. This role combines frontline safety work with people leadership, operational ownership, and cross-functional coordination.

You will lead a team of Safety Response Analysts who handle OpenAI’s most sensitive and high-impact cases, while also personally contributing to casework for complex, high-risk, or high-visibility issues. You will own the execution of high severity escalations in your region and ensure proper execution and communication to cross functional stakeholders.

You will be accountable for ensuring your region consistently meets utilization, quality, and SLA targets while serving as the operational interface with Product, Policy, Legal, Investigations, and regional stakeholders.

This is a 24/7 global operation that requires flexibility to support rotating shifts, including nights, weekends, and holidays, as part of a leadership on-call model.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead and coach a regional team of Safety Response Analysts, ensuring high performance, engagement, and consistent decision quality.
• Own regional operational outcomes, including utilization, SLA adherence, backlog health, and quality benchmarks.
• Handle and oversee the most complex and high-risk cases, serving as the first line of escalation and incident lead for your region.
• Contribute directly to frontline work (20–30%), including investigations, enforcement decisions, and regulatory or legal escalations.
• Partner cross-functionally with Product, Policy, Legal, Investigations, and local market teams to execute safety outcomes and manage risk.
• Drive operational excellence and continuous improvement, improving workflows, tools, automation, and escalation paths.
• Identify emerging risks and trends, translating frontline insights into actionable recommendations for policy, product, or enforcement.

Requirements:

• You have 8+ years of experience in Trust & Safety, Risk Operations, Investigations, Fraud, Annotation, or platform integrity.
• You have 4+ years of direct people leadership or senior-level operational ownership, including coaching experienced operators, setting clear direction and supporting independent judgement.
• You have applied AI tools and automation to improve operational workflows, with sound judgment about where human review remains essential.
• You are deeply familiar with trust and safety operations, across multiple risk areas including content moderation, user safety, fraud, or developer risk frameworks, including the legal, policy, and technical considerations that shape enforcement.
• You are a strong decision-maker in ambiguous, high-risk environments, able to balance speed, accuracy, and defensibility when handling sensitive or high-impact cases.
• You communicate complex safety and risk decisions clearly and credibly, whether writing escalation narratives, briefing Legal or Policy, or aligning Product and leadership during incidents.
• You can translate between frontline operations and strategic stakeholders, turning messy real-world cases into structured insights and turning policy or product direction into clear, executable guidance for your team.
• You are skilled at influencing without authority, building trust with Product, Policy, Legal, Investigations, and regional partners to drive alignment and resolve ambiguity.
• You use data, tooling, and automation to improve quality, efficiency, and scale to not just measure performance, but to make better decisions.
• You are comfortable leading in a 24/7, high-pressure operational environment, providing calm, credible leadership during incidents, spikes, and regulatory or reputational events.