Director, Employment Investigations

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 Global Employee Relations, Employment Investigations, and People Standards team brings together expertise in employee relations, workplace investigations, and people policy and compliance. We play a critical role in shaping how OpenAI supports its people through complexity, growth, and change.

Our team guides and supports the company through some of its most nuanced and high-impact people challenges. We operate with deep context and care, balancing trust, judgment, and creativity in every situation. We don't default to predefined frameworks. Instead, we take a principled yet flexible approach, designing thoughtful, tailored solutions that reflect our values, the needs of our employees, and the unique pace of OpenAI.

About the Role

We're seeking a seasoned and fearless leader to help lead and scale our high-performing global employment investigations function. You will lead a team of deeply experienced attorney-investigators and ensure that our practices continue to evolve in alignment with the pace and complexity of OpenAI's growth. You will also personally conduct some of the most complex, high-stakes, and sensitive investigations at the company.

You'll serve as a strategic thought partner to Legal, senior leadership, and HRBPs on global investigations strategy, risk mitigation, and employment law matters. This is a role for someone who thrives in ambiguity, exercises sound judgment under pressure, and is passionate about embedding accountability and care into every aspect of OpenAI's culture. This role reports to our Global Head of Investigations, ER and People Standards.

Your Key Responsibilities:

• Lead, develop, and refine a high-performing investigations team composed of senior attorney-investigators.

• Personally conduct high-risk, high-visibility investigations involving allegations of retaliation, harassment, discrimination, misconduct, and other serious violations of law or policy.

• Ensure investigative practices are legally rigorous, ethically sound, and deeply human-centered.

• Review and approve high-quality, objective, and defensible investigation reports.

• Partner with Legal, Compliance, and People teams to evaluate risk and calibrate disciplinary and remediation decisions.

• Identify systemic issues through trend analysis and investigation insights, and contribute to company-wide prevention strategies.

• Strengthen and evolve investigation frameworks, tools, and documentation standards.

• Promote a culture of psychological safety, accountability, and clarity throughout the investigative process.

We're Seeking:

• J.D. and 12+ years of experience leading complex employment investigations, either in-house managing a team or as a partner at an employment or workplace investigations law firm.

• Demonstrated experience managing and scaling high-performing investigations or ER teams; previous people management experience is required.

• Proven experience leading a high-performing team.

• Expertise in employment law, EEO regulations, anti-retaliation principles, and investigation methodologies. Global experience is a plus.

• Fearless judgment and executive presence; proven ability to navigate ambiguity and high-pressure situations with discretion and resolve.

• Exceptional written communication skills with a strong track record of producing clear, concise, and legally defensible investigation reports.

• Proven ability to de-escalate high-stakes matters and deliver difficult messages with clarity and empathy.

• High integrity, impeccable ethics, and a steadfast commitment to confidentiality and fairness.

• AWI-CH certification or other relevant investigation credentials preferred.

Workplace & Location

This role is based in our San Francisco or New York City office. We are not considering remote applications for this role. We offer relocation support to new employees, and we use a hybrid work model: three days in the office per week with optional work from home on Thursdays and Fridays.

Our open-plan offices have height-adjustable desks, conference rooms, phone booths, well-stocked kitchens full of snacks and drinks, spaces for socializing, and more.

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.

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with applicable law, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act. 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.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link.

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At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.

Compensation Range: $320K