Senior Counsel, Litigation & Regulatory

About the Team

OpenAI's Legal team plays a crucial role in furthering OpenAI's mission by tackling innovative, fundamental legal issues in AI. If you're passionate about doing significant and unique work as a technology lawyer, this team is for you. The team comprises legal professionals from diverse fields, including technology, privacy, IP, corporate, cybersecurity, employment, tax, regulatory, and litigation.

About the Role

We’re growing our Litigation and Regulatory team and seek an experienced counsel to lead high-stakes regulatory investigations, enforcement matters, and related litigation involving AI. You will own matters from initial inquiry through resolution, develop practical strategies for novel and technically complex issues, and translate an evolving factual record into clear advice. The role works closely with Legal, Product, Research, Safety, Security, Communications, Global Affairs, and executive stakeholders.

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:

• Lead regulatory inquiries, investigations, and enforcement matters in the United States and internationally, including matters involving federal agencies, state attorneys general, and international regulatory bodies.

• Develop strategy for contested enforcement proceedings and related litigation, including challenges to investigative demands and coordination across parallel matters.

• Partner with litigation and subject-matter counsel on related civil disputes, including privacy, consumer protection, class actions, cybersecurity, competition, copyright, trademark, and other IP issues.

• Manage subpoenas, civil investigative demands, requests for information from regulators and related entities, and discovery.

• Prepare employees and executives for interviews, testimony, depositions, trial, and other appearances before regulators.

• Negotiate resolutions to demands, complaints, and enforcement matters, and assess the practical implications of proposed remedies and commitments.

• Select and manage outside counsel, set strategy and budgets, and maintain clear accountability for quality, timing, and outcomes.

• Develop proactive and, where appropriate, affirmative legal strategies to address regulatory risk and protect the company’s ability to develop and deploy AI responsibly.

• Partner with Global Affairs and Communications on regulator engagement and sensitive external communications, keeping legal strategy and factual representations aligned.

• Assess emerging legal and regulatory developments affecting AI and provide clear, actionable advice to leadership about risks, options, and recommended next steps.

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Have 10+ years of regulatory investigations and/or litigation experience, including substantial experience at technology companies and law firms.

• Have personally set strategy and led complex matters from initial inquiry through resolution, including direct engagement with regulators and opposing counsel.

• Communicate complex legal and technical issues clearly, distinguish established facts from uncertainty, and make practical recommendations under pressure.

• Work effectively with cross-functional teams, legal operations, outside counsel, and senior stakeholders while managing multiple urgent matters.

• Bring intellectual curiosity, sound judgment, a strong sense of ownership, and a willingness to challenge assumptions respectfully and learn from feedback.

• Have a JD and a license or qualification to practice in California.

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.

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. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

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