Safety Response Operations Lead

About The Team

At OpenAI, our Trust, Safety & Risk Operations teams protect our products, users, and organization from various threats including abuse, fraud, scams, and regulatory issues. We operate where operations, compliance, user trust, and safety intersect, collaborating closely with Legal, Policy, Engineering, Product, Go-To-Market teams, and external partners to ensure our platforms remain safe, compliant, and trusted by a global user community.

The Global Safety Response Operations team offers round-the-clock coverage to manage user safety, risk, and regulatory escalations across OpenAI’s products. We handle top-priority cases that demand swift human judgment. This team functions as the primary escalation and execution unit for OpenAI’s safety efforts, preserving product safety and policy alignment while delivering timely, empathetic, and consistent support to users.

About The Role

The Global Safety Response Operations Lead is both a hands-on team manager and an active contributor to handling high-risk safety cases. This position merges frontline safety tasks with leadership, operational responsibility, and collaborative coordination across teams.

You will supervise a regional group of Safety Response Analysts who address OpenAI’s most sensitive issues, while personally managing complex and high-visibility cases. Your duties include overseeing high severity escalations and ensuring effective communication with cross-functional stakeholders.

You will be responsible for meeting regional targets such as utilization rates, quality standards, and SLA compliance. Additionally, you act as the operational liaison with Product, Policy, Legal, Investigations, and regional partners.

This role operates within a global, 24/7 framework requiring flexibility to participate in rotating shifts, including nights, weekends, and holidays, within a leadership on-call structure.

Key Responsibilities

• Manage and mentor a regional Safety Response Analyst team, promoting high performance, engagement, and consistent quality in decision-making.
• Oversee regional operational metrics, including utilization, SLA adherence, backlog status, and quality benchmarks.
• Directly handle and supervise the most challenging and high-risk cases, acting as the primary escalation point and incident lead for your area.
• Dedicate 20-30% of efforts to frontline work such as investigations, enforcement decisions, and managing regulatory or legal escalations.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with Product, Policy, Legal, Investigations, and regional groups to ensure risk management and safety enforcement.
• Lead efforts to improve operations continuously by refining workflows, tools, automations, and escalation procedures.
• Monitor emerging risks and trends and translate frontline observations into actionable recommendations for policy, product, or enforcement updates.

Ideal Candidate Profile

• Minimum of five years of experience in Trust & Safety, Risk Operations, Investigations, Fraud prevention, Annotation, or platform integrity.
• At least four years in senior-level roles or people management capacities.
• Strong capability to make decisions quickly and accurately in ambiguous, high-risk environments.
• Ability to communicate complex safety and risk matters clearly and credibly with diverse stakeholders.
• Skilled at transforming frontline operational realities into structured insights, and translating policy or product directions into actionable guidance for teams.
• Adept at influencing without direct authority, fostering trust across Product, Policy, Legal, Investigations, and regional partners to promote alignment.
• Deep understanding of content moderation, user safety, fraud, or developer risk frameworks, with knowledge of relevant legal, policy, and technical aspects.
• Experience in leveraging data, tools, and automation to enhance quality, efficiency, and scalability of safety operations.
• Comfortable leading in a high-pressure, 24/7 operational setting, providing calm, authoritative leadership during incidents, spikes, or regulatory events.

Equal Opportunity & Compliance

OpenAI values diversity and does not discriminate on any legally protected basis. Background checks will be conducted following applicable laws, and candidates with prior arrests or convictions will be fairly considered in compliance with relevant fairness ordinances.

OpenAI is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is a company dedicated to AI research and safe deployment of general-purpose AI so its benefits can support all humanity. We strive to include diverse perspectives to better align with human needs and safety in developing powerful AI tools.