Senior Counsel, Commercial (Infrastructure)

About the Team OpenAI’s Legal team plays a crucial role in advancing our mission by tackling innovative and fundamental legal issues in AI. The team includes professionals from diverse legal fields—technology, AI, infrastructure, privacy, IP, corporate, employment, tax, regulatory, and litigation—who collaborate closely with colleagues across the company. If you are passionate about being a technology lawyer working on cutting-edge challenges, you’ll thrive here. About the Role We’re seeking a senior lawyer to participate in commercial legal strategy and execution across OpenAI’s fast-growing infrastructure portfolio. This is a cross-functional role that will partner closely with procurement, supply chain, partnerships, finance, and product teams to structure, negotiate, and manage the transactions that will support OpenAI’s long-term infrastructure ambitions. We’re looking for an experienced infrastructure transactions lawyer who thrives in ambiguity and wants to help define the commercial playbook for infrastructure efforts in the AI era. This role reports to the Associate General Counsel for infrastructure. 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: - Own commercial legal strategy and risk management for OpenAI infrastructure transactions. - Draft, negotiate, and advise on complex agreements with infrastructure suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and technology partners. - Support strategic partnerships involving AI infrastructure and hardware supply chains. - Develop frameworks for procurement, licensing, and collaboration across the infrastructure ecosystem. - Partner with finance and operations teams to align contract terms with business and compliance requirements. - Collaborate with policy and regulatory colleagues on issues impacting global supply chains, export controls, and manufacturing. - Build scalable, efficient contracting processes that support OpenAI’s infrastructure development at speed while managing risk. You might thrive in this role if you: - Have 8+ years of legal experience, with substantial focus on technology transactions and commercial contracting. - Have a JD and license or qualification to practice in CA. - A mix of in-house and top-tier law firm experience. - Expertise negotiating agreements in the infrastructure domain. - Familiarity with global supply chains, infrastructure projects for both buying and building, and manufacturing transactions. - Demonstrated ability to operate with autonomy and sound judgment in highly technical and fast-moving environments. - Exceptional communication skills, with an ability to distill complexity into actionable, business-aligned guidance. - Experience advising on cross-border deals and global regulatory frameworks. - Prior experience with infrastructure, supply agreements, joint ventures, or other complex commercial deals in hardware industries is a strong plus. 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 https://cdn.openai.com/policies/eeo-policy-statement.pdf. Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates. 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. 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