Director of Events Management

About the Team OpenAI’s mission is to ensure that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. The Global Events & Experiences team brings people together around OpenAI’s technology, ideas, and mission. Our experiences deepen understanding, build trust, and create meaningful connections across the communities we serve. Our work spans developers, startups, founders, enterprise customers, executives, researchers, policymakers, media, and more. We lead with curiosity, thoughtful hospitality, and a deep commitment to shining the spotlight on others. About the Role We are looking for a Director of Events Management, reporting to the Global Head of Events, to lead the event management arm of our team. You’ll oversee a diverse portfolio, from flagship conferences and developer programs to executive gatherings, research events, and policy and media engagements. This is a people manager role leading an approximately 10-person, high-performing, high-agency team. You’ll invest in their growth and give them the clarity and autonomy to do strong work, supported by efficient team operations, effective agency partnerships, and sustainable workloads. Working under the Global Head of Events, you’ll lead the team in translating business priorities into event experiences that tell compelling stories through OpenAI’s products and partners. Partnership with Creative Production and Technical Production leaders will connect planning and delivery. In this role, you will: - Lead, mentor, and develop the team through clear goals, candid feedback, career support, and company context. Make tough calls on priorities and performance when needed, while maintaining trust, agency, and high standards. - Partner with the Global Head of Events to prioritize projects, assess new requests, and allocate capacity across the portfolio, surfacing tradeoffs and recommending what to pursue, sequence, or defer. - Build efficient, consistent operations through clear intake, briefs, project plans, approval paths, and reusable tools and playbooks that reduce duplicated effort and make ownership visible. - Manage agency partnerships, including selection, scopes of work, onboarding, and performance reviews. Set clear expectations for quality, cost, and accountability in partnership with Procurement, Legal, and production leads. - Build a deep understanding of each audience’s needs and expectations, and guide the team in translating those insights into thoughtful hospitality, accessible experiences, and relevant content. - Become an expert in OpenAI’s brand and what people should leave events thinking and feeling. Bring a clear point of view on what great looks like and what we want OpenAI to be known for, and sharpen it with the team. - Align cross-functional partners across Marketing, GTM, Product, Research, Global Affairs, Communications, and executive teams on event goals, audiences, messaging, and decisions. - Partner with Creative Production and Technical Production leaders on clear responsibilities, handoffs, and shared plans, ensuring event management needs are integrated into delivery. - Maintain visibility into budgets, timelines, dependencies, and risks across the portfolio. Help teams resolve issues early, navigate competing needs, and escalate consequential decisions with clear recommendations. - Establish practical measures of event outcomes and operational health. Share progress and learnings with leadership, and turn audience feedback and post-event reviews into improvements across the team. You might thrive in this role if you: - Have 14+ years of experience in event management, including leading complex event portfolios and managing teams. - Bring substantial experience leading complex event portfolios across audiences and formats, with a track record of building capable teams and delivering through others. - Are a thoughtful people leader who builds trust, coaches with care and candor, handles difficult conversations constructively, and creates a collaborative, low-ego team culture. - Have a systems-oriented approach to operations, with strong judgment about which processes create clarity and efficiency and where flexibility serves the team better. - Know how to build effective agency relationships and manage scopes, budgets, and performance while protecting quality and using resources responsibly. - Communicate clearly and influence across functions and seniority levels, bringing calm judgment to ambiguity, competing priorities, and high-visibility work. - Are curious about AI and motivated by OpenAI’s mission, with a strong instinct for storytelling, hospitality, and experiences that respect the needs of different audiences. WORKPLACE AND LOCATION This role is based hybrid in San Francisco. Occasional travel will be required. 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 https://cdn.openai.com/policies/eeo-policy-statement.pdf. 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 t