Director, Certifications

About the Role

OpenAI’s certification initiative is a major strategic program that spans multiple parts of the company. The Director of Certifications will own this initiative as a company-level program across Product, Customer Education, GTM, and Partnerships.

This role is responsible for defining the architecture, operating model, and long-term trajectory of OpenAI’s certification program. You will set vision for how OpenAI certifications are structured, how they integrate with product capabilities, and how the system scales to reach millions of learners while maintaining credibility and rigor. The role requires operating across all of OpenAI to build a coherent certification system that reflects real product capability.

The role reports to the Head of Customer Readiness and works closely with leaders across Product, GTM, and Partnerships.

In this role, you will:

Own the certification initiative as a strategic program

• Lead the development of OpenAI’s certification system as a company-wide initiative.

• Define the program’s structure, roadmap, and operating model.

• Ensure that certifications evolve alongside OpenAI’s rapidly developing products.

Define how AI capability is measured

• Develop frameworks for evaluating practical AI capability using OpenAI products.

• Ensure certifications measure real workflows and product usage rather than theoretical knowledge.

• Translate product capabilities into meaningful certification pathways.

Shape product integration

• Partner closely with product teams to ensure certification systems integrate with OpenAI’s platform and learning tools.

• Influence product features that support learning, evaluation, and skill development.

• Ensure certifications remain tightly aligned with real product capabilities.

Build a scalable certification system

• Design a program architecture capable of reaching millions of learners while maintaining credibility and signal value.

• Ensure certification pathways integrate with OpenAI learning programs and educational initiatives.

• Establish systems that allow certification programs to scale globally.

Drive cross-company alignment

• Operate across Product, GTM, Customer Education, and Partnerships to align strategy and execution.

• Ensure certification initiatives reinforce enterprise adoption and workforce readiness.

• Build shared understanding across teams of how certification programs support OpenAI’s broader mission.

You Might Thrive in This Role If You

• Have led large, cross-functional strategic initiatives involving product, education, and go-to-market teams

• Are comfortable defining new programs where the operating model does not yet exist

• Can influence multiple teams and senior leaders without direct authority

• Enjoy working at the intersection of technology, education, and workforce transformation

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience leading high-impact, high-visibility cross-functional programs

• Experience building for developer or technical audiences

• Experience leading large-scale learning or credential systems

• Experience working closely with product teams on customer-facing tools

• Familiarity with developer platforms, AI systems, or emerging technology ecosystems

Why This Role Matters

AI is rapidly becoming a foundational capability across the global economy. As organizations adopt AI technologies, the ability to demonstrate real skills with these systems will become increasingly important.

The certification system being built at OpenAI will help define how AI capability is measured and recognized.

The person in this role will shape how millions of people demonstrate practical AI skills and how organizations evaluate those capabilities.

Compensation Range: $239.4K - $335K USD

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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