Senior Manager, Procurement Help Desk

The Procurement organization enables our mission by ensuring every dollar is spent responsibly, compliantly, and efficiently. As a key part of this function, the Procurement HelpDesk connects thousands of incoming requests to the right process, stakeholder, or system—delivering a fast, consistent, and compliant experience across Source-to-Contract (S2C), Procure-to-Pay (P2P), Employee Workflows (EWF), and Travel & Expense (T&E). This team is essential to OpenAI’s ability to scale without compromising on compliance or service quality.

We’re looking for a Senior Manager, Procurement HelpDesk to lead the intake and resolution engine for the Procurement function. You’ll own the full lifecycle of request management—from triage logic and intake routing to SLA adherence, stakeholder escalations, and system optimization.

This is a high-impact, execution-focused role that combines operational rigor with program design. You’ll manage centralized intake workflows, resolve or route inbound issues, enforce response SLAs, and maintain intake-to-resolution metrics. You’ll also partner cross-functionally (Legal, Tax, StratFin, Accounting, Security) to ensure escalations are handled quickly and compliantly—and collaborate with engineering to prepare systems for AI-driven support.

What we’re looking for:

A systems-oriented operator who can run a high-volume intake engine with precision, clarity, and speed — while continuously improving how requests flow across the organization.

You likely bring:

• Experience leading centralized intake or HelpDesk functions
  You’ve owned triage logic, routing rules, SLAs, queue health, and escalation frameworks in a complex, cross-functional environment. You understand how to build a front door that scales.
  

• Strong operational judgment under pressure
  You can quickly distinguish low-risk issues from compliance-sensitive or high-impact matters and route them appropriately. You’re calm in high-volume environments and decisive when urgency matters.
  

• Deep understanding of the procurement lifecycle
  You understand how S2C, P2P, T&E, and employee workflows connect — and where risk triggers, approval thresholds, and compliance breakpoints typically live.
  

• Metrics-driven program management
  You track intake-to-resolution cycle times, SLA adherence, backlog trends, and escalation volume — and use data to improve throughput and reduce friction.
  

• Process design and workflow optimization skills
  You know how to design clean intake forms, minimize handoffs, eliminate ambiguity in routing logic, and reduce rework at the source.
  

• Cross-functional influence
  You partner effectively with Legal, Accounting, Tax, Security, StratFin, and Engineering to resolve issues quickly and improve upstream clarity.
  

• Systems fluency
  Experience with tools like Zip, Jira, Oracle, Navan, or similar intake and approval systems. You understand structured data capture and are comfortable preparing workflows for AI-driven triage.

This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.

In this role, you will:

• Own end-to-end issue resolution across Procurement, spanning S2C, P2P, EWF, and T&E domains.
  

• Manage and optimize the centralized intake system—ensuring clean data capture, clear routing logic, and minimal handoffs.
  

• Review requests for completeness and urgency; directly resolve low-risk issues and escalate high-risk or complex matters to the appropriate partner.
  

• Enforce and improve SLAs and cycle time metrics, with regular reporting to stakeholders and leadership.
  

• Partner with internal stakeholders and suppliers to proactively identify pain points and close feedback loops.
  

• Continuously refine backend triage rules, intake forms, and system logic to improve speed and compliance.
  

• Coordinate closely with Procurement team members and XFN partners (e.g., Legal, StratFin, Tax, Accounting, Security).
  

• Prepare intake systems for AI-driven support by identifying automation-ready workflows and data structure gaps.

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Have 8+ years of experience in procurement operations and intake/triage management in a fast-scaling environment.
  

• Have led HelpDesk or centralized intake programs in a complex, cross-functional setting.
  

• Understand the procurement lifecycle across S2C, P2P, EWF, and T&E, and can identify risk triggers or compliance thresholds.
  

• Bring strong prioritization and problem-solving skills, especially in high-volume or high-pressure situations.
  

• Have experience with tools like Zip, Jira, Oracle, Navan, or similar intake/approval systems.
  

• Are data-driven and comfortable building dashboards or narratives to track SLAs, cycle times, and resolution trends.
  

• Have worked with AI or automation tools, and are excited to prepare intake systems for AI-driven triage.
  

• Communicate effectively with internal stakeholders, executives, suppliers, and technical teams.

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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