# Strategic Technology Negotiations Lead

**Company:** [OpenAI](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/openai)
**Location:** San Francisco, CA
**Role:** Business Development
**Salary:** $234k – $295k/yr
**Experience:** 10+ years
**Skills:** negotiation strategy, enterprise software agreements, Data Platforms, infrastructure software, Observability, enterprise saas, usage-based pricing, strategic sourcing, supplier ecosystem analysis, Executive Communication
**Posted:** 2026-07-23

> Lead complex, high-stakes technology negotiations for OpenAI as a senior individual contributor. Develop strategies, synthesize technical and commercial factors, structure deals involving cost/equity/revenue/risk, and drive agreements with data platforms, infrastructure, observability, and enterprise SaaS suppliers. Requires 10+ years negotiating sophisticated enterprise agreements and prior team leadership experience.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities
- Personally lead complex, high-value, and business-critical technology negotiations from initial strategy through signed agreement.
- Develop fact-based negotiation plans that define objectives, leverage, alternatives, sequencing, roles, decision points, and escalation paths.
- Rapidly synthesize technical requirements, supplier economics, market dynamics, adoption patterns, dependencies, and business priorities.
- Partner with leaders across Engineering, Research, IT, Systems, Finance, Legal, Corporate Development, and other teams to establish a unified negotiation strategy.
- Assess each negotiation within the broader supplier ecosystem, identifying interconnected relationships that may create value, constraints, dependencies, or leverage.
- Shape complex deal structures with cost, equity, revenue, partnership, risk, and long-term strategic implications.
- Advise executives through clear, decision-ready narratives covering deal strategy, financial impact, alternatives, risks, tradeoffs, and recommendations.
- Lead supplier engagement at working-team and executive levels, including difficult escalations and negotiations conducted under significant pressure.
- Create commercial structures that deliver meaningful savings and cost avoidance while improving scalability, flexibility, performance, and risk allocation.
- Turn lessons from major negotiations into reusable playbooks, market intelligence, and stronger negotiation practices for Strategic Sourcing.

## Requirements
- 10+ years of experience leading complex commercial negotiations in strategic sourcing, technology procurement, strategic partnerships, deal strategy, corporate development, or a related field.
- Expert negotiator who enjoys personally developing the strategy, leading the room, and driving difficult deals to resolution.
- Previously managed or led teams and are intentionally seeking a senior individual contributor role centered on direct ownership, influence, and execution.
- Personally led large-scale enterprise software or technology agreements with sophisticated pricing, commitment, licensing, consumption, or partnership structures.
- Understand enterprise software business models, including usage-based pricing, multi-year commitments, ramp structures, pooled consumption, growth protections, and performance-based economics.
- Can evaluate a deal across cost, revenue, equity, partnership value, supplier leverage, risk, and long-term ecosystem implications.
- Have negotiated agreements involving data platforms, infrastructure software, observability, enterprise SaaS, or similarly complex technology categories.
- Can engage credibly with deeply technical teams and influence senior executives through structured thinking, clear communication, and sound commercial judgment.
- Remain effective under pressure, build alignment among stakeholders with competing objectives, and know when to challenge, escalate, create alternatives, or close.

## Nice-to-Haves
- Experience with data lake and lakehouse technologies, observability, and enterprise SaaS.

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