Senior Talent & Succession Program Manager

About the Team

The People Programs & Strategy team at OpenAI plays a pivotal role in creating an environment where every employee can thrive, grow, and contribute to our mission of ensuring that AGI benefits all of humanity. This evolving team designs and delivers people programs that support our rapid growth, unique culture, and innovative spirit.

We focus on making it easier for people to do their best work at OpenAI by shaping how performance, growth, onboarding, and related systems come together — moving toward simpler, more continuous, and more useful experiences in the flow of work.

About the Role

This role owns the Talent & Succession layer of OpenAI’s People Operating System — how we identify, differentiate, and invest in talent as we scale.

You will design and evolve the systems that power talent reviews, succession planning, and critical role decisions, building lightweight, scalable approaches that leaders and HRBPs can use effectively. The goal is to translate talent philosophy into clear, usable mechanisms that drive high-quality, timely decisions without adding unnecessary complexity.

This is a highly cross-functional role working closely with adjacent pillars within People Programs & Strategy (especially Performance & Rewards), as well as Compensation, People Analytics, and HRBPs to ensure talent decisions are connected, actionable, and grounded in strong signals.

This role reports to the Head of People Programs & Strategy and operates as a peer to the Performance & Rewards lead.

Your Responsibilities:

- Own and evolve OpenAI’s talent review approach: Design and operationalize a practical, lightweight talent review model that leaders and HRBPs can use effectively.

- Drive differentiation and talent decision quality: Build clear frameworks and guidance for identifying top, critical, and developing talent, and support consistent, high-quality decision-making.

- Build bench and succession systems: Develop scalable approaches for assessing bench strength, succession readiness, and risk across critical roles.

- Define and maintain critical roles frameworks: Partner with leaders and HRBPs to identify key roles, single points of failure, and succession priorities across the company.

- Translate strategy into usable systems: Turn talent philosophy into concrete mechanisms — templates, pre-work, decision trees, and guidance that reduce ambiguity and improve execution.

- Pilot, learn, and iterate quickly: Run targeted pilots, gather feedback, and continuously refine talent processes to improve speed, clarity, and impact.

- Partner deeply with HRBPs and People leaders: Co-design approaches that balance company-wide consistency with local flexibility, preserving HRBP ownership of application and judgment.

- Integrate closely with Performance & Rewards: Ensure talent decisions connect cleanly to performance signals, while partnering with Compensation and People Analytics to align decisions with rewards and insights.

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