Principal Recruiter, Strategic AI Talent

About the Team

OpenAI’s mission is to build safe artificial general intelligence (AGI) that benefits all of humanity. Achieving this requires bringing the world’s most exceptional talent under one roof to push the boundaries of what’s possible.

Our Research Recruiting team plays a critical role in this effort. We are an embedded part of the research organization—working side by side with our research staff to deeply understand evolving priorities, build trust, and strategically shape the future of OpenAI’s talent.

About the Role

We are looking for a highly strategic recruiter to work closely with the Head of Research Recruiting on a small set of unusually important, high-touch searches and candidate relationships. This role will focus on exceptional talent who does not move through a standard recruiting process: highly visible researchers, technical leaders, operators, and other special-interest candidates where timing, discretion, market intelligence, and tailored engagement matter as much as process execution.

This is not a conventional req-based recruiting role. You will help identify where the market is moving, develop intelligence on top talent and competitor activity, translate that intelligence into action, and orchestrate bespoke recruiting strategies for candidates who require a more nuanced path into OpenAI. You should be able to translate these signals and states into clear, actionable advice for leaders and then make it happen.

In this role, you will

Partner directly with the Head of Research Recruiting and research leadership team to define priority talent targets and shape bespoke engagement strategies.

Build and maintain deep market intelligence across frontier AI, research, engineering, and adjacent talent ecosystems, including competitor movement, candidate motivations, and relationship context.

Proactively identify, map, and cultivate exceptional high-profile talent before there is...