People Systems Lead
ABOUT THE TEAM
The People Technology team builds and operates the systems that support how OpenAI hires, develops, and supports its people. The team brings together People Systems and People Innovation Labs, a product engineering group focused on rethinking how we find and retain exceptional talent and help employees do their best work.
People Systems owns the company’s core people-technology ecosystem, including platforms such as Workday and Ashby. People Innovation Labs builds new employee and People Team experiences on top of that foundation, including OpenHouse, our internal employee hub, and AI-powered products and automations.
Together, we are working toward a model in which our enterprise systems provide reliable data, controls, and core business logic, while employees and managers can complete more of their work through simple, integrated, and AI-native experiences.
ABOUT THE ROLE
We are looking for a People Systems Lead to manage the People Systems team and shape how our core systems evolve.
You will be responsible for the reliability and effectiveness of our current environment while helping us move beyond the constraints of traditional enterprise software. This includes stabilizing and improving platforms such as Workday and Ashby, designing the integrations that connect them to the broader technology ecosystem, and partnering with People Innovation Labs to surface workflows through OpenHouse, Slack, and AI-powered experiences.
This role requires someone who is comfortable moving between strategy, technical design, and team leadership. You should understand People systems deeply, be able to work through integration and architecture decisions with engineers, and translate complex organizational needs into scalable solutions. You will also manage vendor relationships, develop the People Systems team, and drive alignment across People, Engineering, Finance, Security, Legal, and other partners.
This role could be a fit for someone who has grown up in People Systems and developed strong technical depth, or someone with an engineering, product, or integration-platform background who has meaningful experience with HR technology. We care more about your ability to rethink how these systems should work than whether you have followed a traditional People Systems career path.
IN THIS ROLE, YOU WILL
- Lead and develop the People Systems team, creating clear ownership, strong operating practices, and opportunities for people to grow.
- Set the strategy and roadmap for OpenAI’s People systems, balancing immediate operational needs with longer-term architectural change.
- Own the configuration, reliability, and ongoing operation of core platforms, including Workday and Ashby.
- Lead complex systems initiatives that span multiple teams and translate organizational needs into scalable technical solutions.
- Design and guide integrations across People systems, internal products, data platforms, and the broader company technology ecosystem.
- Partner closely with People Innovation Labs to build employee and manager experiences on top of enterprise back ends.
- Help move the People technology ecosystem toward a more headless model, allowing workflows to be surfaced through OpenHouse, Slack, and AI agents while preserving appropriate systems of record and controls.
- Improve the stability and effectiveness of critical People systems.
- Strengthen data quality, security, auditability, controls, and operational readiness as the company scales.
- Lead vendor relationships, including product strategy discussions, quarterly business reviews, performance management, and escalations.
- Build alignment across People, Engineering, Finance, Security, Legal, and other stakeholders.
- Communicate technical choices, risks, and tradeoffs clearly to senior leaders.
YOU MIGHT THRIVE IN THIS ROLE IF YOU
- Have deep experience with People systems and the workflows they support, ideally including significant Workday experience.
- Have led a People Systems, HR technology, enterprise applications, or similarly technical systems team.
- Have hands-on experience designing and managing integrations rather than only administering vendor tools.
- Can reason about APIs, data flows, system boundaries, permissions, reliability, and failure handling.
- Have built or supported custom interfaces, workflow layers, or internal products on top of enterprise systems.
- Approach systems work with a product mindset and look beyond the default experience provided by a vendor.
- Can translate ambiguous business needs into clear systems requirements and scalable solutions.
- Have developed and delivered a systems roadmap involving multiple teams, dependencies, and competing priorities.
- Work effectively with engineers and can challenge technical assumptions without needing to write every component yourself.
- Have led complex vendor relationships and know how to use business reviews, product feedback, and performance measures to improve outcomes.
- Can balance innovation with the reliability, security, and controls required of systems that support payroll, recruiting, compensation, and other critical processes.
- Are an experienced people manager who sets clear expectations, coaches senior team members, and addresses performance issues directly.
- Communicate clearly with both technical and nontechnical audiences and can drive decisions across groups with different priorities.
- Are excited to explore how AI can change the way enterprise systems and People teams operate.
Direct experience with every platform in our environment is not required. We are interested in candidates from People Systems, engineering management, enterprise product, and integration-platform backgrounds who can bring both technical credibility and a strong understanding of how People systems work.