Corporate Development, Deal Lead

About the Team

The Corporate Development team sits at the intersection of OpenAI’s strategy and the global AI ecosystem. Partnering closely with engineering, product, and business leaders, we analyze markets, technologies, and companies to identify opportunities that accelerate OpenAI’s mission and long-term strategy. Bringing together expertise in strategy, M&A, and integration, the team leads the end-to-end process of sourcing, evaluating, negotiating, and integrating acquisitions and other strategic transactions.

About the Role

The Corporate Development Deal Lead supports the full lifecycle of M&A and strategic investment transactions, from proactive sourcing through diligence, structuring, negotiation, and closing. This role partners closely with Product, Engineering, Legal, Finance, and executive leadership to evaluate opportunities, assess strategic and product fit, and determine financial and operational impact.

In this role, you will:

• Support end-to-end execution of corporate development transactions, including sourcing, diligence, structuring, negotiation, and closing.

• Evaluate strategic fit, product alignment, and financial impact of potential M&A or investment opportunities.

• Collaborate cross-functionally with product, engineering, legal, finance, and executive leadership to evaluate and advance deals.

• Build financial models, commercial cases, and decision-making frameworks for executive stakeholders.

• Prepare and present deal materials to senior leaders and the board.

• Contribute to pipeline development and ongoing refinement of our deal process and strategy.

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Have 5+ years of experience leading M&A or strategic transactions from start to finish — either in corporate development, private equity, investment banking, or venture investing.

• Combine strong analytical skills with commercial judgment and strategic insight.

• Are comfortable managing ambiguity, building process in a fast-moving environment, and operating with high ownership.

• Communicate clearly and persuasively with internal and external stakeholders.

• Are excited to help build and shape the corp dev function at a mission-driven AI company.

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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