Executive Compensation Lead

OpenAI • San Francisco, CA

5d • Hybrid

About The Position

We’re hiring an Executive Compensation Lead to help shape how OpenAI compensates its most senior leaders. This is a high-impact individual contributor role focused on executive pay strategy, equity design, and governance in a fast-growing, high-visibility environment.
In this role, you will partner closely with senior leadership, Finance, Legal, and the Compensation Committee to design and evaluate executive compensation frameworks, assess equity usage and dilution, and support critical compensation decisions. You will own executive compensation analysis end to end, including benchmarking, modeling, and preparing clear, board-ready materials that inform leadership and committee decisions.
This role is ideal for someone with strong executive compensation expertise, sound judgment, and the ability to translate complex pay and governance considerations into practical, decision-ready recommendations. This role reports to our Head of Equity Programs

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience in executive and equity compensation, ideally within high-growth or late-stage technology companies.
• Direct experience supporting executive compensation decisions and/or Compensation Committee processes.
• Strong financial modeling and analytical skills, with the ability to assess tradeoffs across pay, dilution, governance, and retention.
• Familiarity with executive compensation practices, including benchmarking, disclosure considerations, and governance standards.
• Advanced Excel or Google Sheets skills; experience with compensation survey tools and analytics platforms is a plus.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with comfort producing board-level and executive-ready materials.
• High integrity, sound judgment, and discretion when handling sensitive executive information.

Responsibilities

• Design, evolve, and govern executive compensation and equity programs, including base salary, annual incentives, and long-term equity, aligned to business strategy, market benchmarks, and long-term value creation.
• Lead executive compensation benchmarking and market analysis, including peer group construction, pay positioning, and evaluation of emerging practices across late-stage private and public technology companies.
• Develop and maintain sophisticated models to assess executive pay outcomes, equity grant sizing, dilution, burn rate, and stock-based compensation expense under multiple scenarios.
• Partner closely with Legal and Finance to ensure executive compensation programs align with disclosure, governance, and compliance requirements.
• Prepare clear, decision-ready materials for senior leadership and the Compensation Committee, including executive pay proposals, equity usage analyses, and compensation review recommendations.
• Serve as a trusted advisor to senior leaders by translating complex compensation, equity, and governance tradeoffs into concise, actionable insights.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with Total Rewards, HRBPs, Recruiting, and Equity Administration to ensure accurate execution, implementation, and ongoing oversight of executive compensation programs.

Benefits

• Our open-plan offices have height-adjustable desks, conference rooms, phone booths, well-stocked kitchens full of snacks and drinks, three in-house prepared meals daily, outdoor space for working and socializing, wellness rooms, private bike storage, and more.
• We also offer relocation assistance to new employees.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Executive
• Education Level: No Education Listed
• Number of Employees: 1-10 employees