# Senior Manager, Customs and Trade

**Company**: OpenAI
**Location**: San Francisco
**Work arrangement**: hybrid
**Experience**: senior
**Job type**: Full time
**Salary**: $297K – $330K
**Category**: Engineering
**Industry**: Technology
**Wikidata**: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q124605186

**Apply**: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/03538000-4fa6-408c-b956-af5adc05a5e0?utm_source=yubhub.co&utm_medium=jobs_feed&utm_campaign=apply
**Canonical**: https://yubhub.co/jobs/job_fe8bc18f-2f6

## Description

We're hiring a Sr. Manager, Customs and Trade Operations to lead OpenAI's global import customs strategy and operating model. This is a senior role with broad scope across hardware sourcing, development-stage materials, supplier onboarding, landed-cost design, broker strategy, and cross-border execution.

You will refine how OpenAI governs import classification, customs valuation, country of origin, importer structure, broker operating models, documentation standards, and shipment decisioning in a way that supports the company's pace of technical development and global operations.

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:

- Refine the strategy and operating model for OpenAI's import customs program, embedding customs, tariff, and cross-border considerations into sourcing, development-stage materials, supplier operations, and logistics.

- Own governance for HTS classification, customs valuation, and country of origin, including decision quality, substantiation, supplier data requirements, broker handoff standards, escalation paths, and reusable knowledge.

- Partner with Engineering, Procurement and Strategic Finance to build durable landed-cost, tariff-impact, and importer-structure decision models that support global sourcing and planning.

- Lead broker strategy and operating standards across customs brokers, freight forwarders, and trade-advisory partners, including performance management, escalation management, and execution quality.

- Build and scale import documentation, recordkeeping, and supplier-onboarding requirements for customs-critical data, including commercial invoices, packing lists, broker packets, entry support, prototype claims, and audit-ready files.

- Partner with technical and operations teams to support compliant cross-border movement of development-stage materials and related operational workflows.

- Establish customs-related policies, SOPs, training, metrics, SLAs, and escalation paths that reduce avoidable friction and improve execution quality across the import lifecycle.

- Partner with Legal, Tax, and Business on origin analysis, tariff monitoring, trade controversy, importer setup, and new market entry.

- Build internal tooling and AI-enabled workflows that improve triage, document review, knowledge retrieval, recurring decision support, operational reporting, and overall program scale.

## Skills

### Required
- International trade operations
- Trade law
- Cross-border ecommerce
- Import classification
- Customs valuation
- Country of origin
- Broker management
- Customs documentation controls

### Nice to have
- Hardware development processes
- Sourcing
- Supplier onboarding
- Landed-cost analysis
- Cross-border execution
- Procurement leadership
- Hardware engineering
- Manufacturing partners
- Brokers
- Finance stakeholders
- Legal partners
- Operations teams
- Service providers
- Cross-functional programs
- Speed
- Discretion
- Strong execution
- Writing and communication skills
- AI-enabled workflows
- Internal tools
- Knowledge systems
- Agentic processes

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Source: [Apply at jobs.ashbyhq.com](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/03538000-4fa6-408c-b956-af5adc05a5e0?utm_source=yubhub.co&utm_medium=jobs_feed&utm_campaign=apply)