OpenAI's Hardware organization needs to develop strategy, sourcing, and vendor partnerships for EDA/IP, emulation, and chip systems to support their AI workloads and supercomputing infrastructure, aiming to accelerate program execution, secure capacity, and optimize costs.
Requirements
- 8+ years in EDA/IP licensing/strategic sourcing, and supplier base strategy roles.
- Deep familiarity with vendors in EDA, IP, design services, and emulation.
- Strong commercial negotiation skills with a proven track record of securing favorable terms and managing complex contracts.
- Ability to partner with engineering leaders to translate technical needs into commercial outcomes.
- Executive maturity and presence to represent OpenAI with top vendor leadership.
- Excellent organizational and prioritization skills—able to manage ongoing needs while supporting rapid escalations.
- Preferred: Experience in ASIC partnerships/strategic sourcing and deep familiarity with vendors in supply chains
Responsibilities
- Lead end-to-end supplier and licensing strategy for EDA, IP, and large rack systems supporting OpenAI’s ASIC and infrastructure programs.
- Act as the single intake point for all license requests and partner engagements, maintaining inventory, rights management, and reuse policies across OpenAI.
- Own supplier selection, evaluation, pricing, contracting, renewals, and performance management across current and future partners.
- Rationalize licensing across organizations to maximize efficiency and eliminate duplicate spend, influencing engineering to support strategic consolidation efforts.
- Drive commercial structures and contracts for IP blocks, design services, verification, foundry/OSAT engagements, and NPI ramp support—ensuring shortened contract cycles and timely resource and capacity commitments.
- Lead emulator negotiations, capacity planning, and usage agreements; develop escalation paths to meet critical engineering needs.
- Build durable executive relationships with vendors, run QBRs, negotiate early-access programs, and align on joint roadmaps to provide visibility into OpenAI’s evolving supplier needs.
Other
- This is a highly cross-functional role, driving supplier selection, contract negotiations, and ongoing vendor management for the tools, IP, and systems that underpin OpenAI’s most ambitious hardware programs.
- As OpenAI scales silicon, system design, and cross-org research needs, you will be the single-threaded owner for EDA/IP, emulation, and chip supplier engagements.
- Your work will directly accelerate program execution velocity, secure mission-critical capacity, and strengthen executive-level vendor relationships.
- You will have an opportunity to drive vendor optimization by providing clarity on needs, reducing duplicate licenses and unnecessary costs, accelerate contract execution to secure critical capacity on time, and build trusted partnerships with key suppliers.
- You will also help establish clear governance and scalable engagement frameworks that provide visibility into spend, utilization, and risk as OpenAI continues to grow.
