About the Position

SMB Innovation Sales & Strategy Lead

San Francisco

About the Team

OpenAI is building the next generation of advertising for an AI-powered world. As AI changes how people discover information, explore possibilities, and make decisions, we believe this presents a huge opportunity for small and medium-sized businesses to connect with customers in new ways.

The SMB Ads Marketing team is building this opportunity from the ground up. We define how businesses discover OpenAI’s advertising platform, become successful advertisers, and grow their investment over time. Working closely with Product, Ads Engineering, Data Science, and Sales, we combine customer insight, rigorous experimentation, and fast execution to turn early opportunities into scalable growth.

About the Role

The SMB Innovation Sales & Strategy Lead will identify, incubate, and scale new revenue opportunities across OpenAI’s SMB Ads business. This foundational role combines strategic thinking, analytical rigor, and hands-on execution to develop differentiated customer propositions, validate product opportunities, and launch new go-to-market programs.

Working across Product, Engineering, Sales, Marketing, and Data Science, this person will lead initiatives from opportunity assessment through customer discovery, commercial pilots, and transition to scale. The remit includes industry-specific opportunities, differentiated customer engagement models, and innovative approaches across self-serve, sales-assisted, and partner-led channels.

The lead will also partner with SMB leadership and the Strategy & Operations team to inform the overall SMB strategy, contributing customer segmentation, commercial insights, and evidence from incubation programs to broader planning and investment decisions.

Responsibilities

Identify untapped opportunities across SMB segments, industries, and channels. Build business cases and launch pilots to validate customer demand and commercial potential.
Design new acquisition, activation, and expansion programs, including industry-specific and assisted-growth approaches. Partner with sales teams and outsourced sales providers to connect self-serve adoption with sales-assisted engagement.
Translate customer discovery into product opportunities. Partner with Product and Engineering to evaluate solutions and use customer and commercial evidence to guide investment.
Develop actionable SMB segmentation based on needs, business characteristics, advertising maturity, behavior, growth potential, and economics. Tailor acquisition, onboarding, service, and expansion across customer channels.
Own pilot delivery and measurement across incremental revenue, conversion, customer outcomes, and cost to serve. Scale successful programs through clear playbooks and ownership; refine or retire those that miss defined success criteria.
Shape SMB strategy and investment recommendations with leadership and Strategy & Operations, drawing on market analysis, segmentation, and pilot results.
Lead the innovation portfolio through clear roadmaps, performance measures, and decision milestones. Resolve delivery challenges and transition proven programs into ongoing operations.

Requirements

Approximately 8-10 years of experience in business incubation, growth, strategy, business operations, product strategy, or consulting, with substantial ownership of implementation and commercial results.
Understanding of SMB customers and self-serve business models, including how sales-assisted and partner-led approaches support growth.
Demonstrated success taking initiatives from customer insight and business case through pilot, launch, and measurable impact.
Strong analytical and financial modeling skills across opportunity sizing, unit economics, funnel analysis, and experimentation.
Ability to translate customer segmentation into differentiated propositions, engagement models, and investment decisions.
Experience working directly with customers to uncover needs and shape product and go-to-market recommendations.
Ability to lead cross-functional initiatives, align senior stakeholders, and resolve competing priorities.
Ability to combine strategic analysis with hands-on customer discovery, pilot delivery, and program execution.
Sound judgment in ambiguous environments and the ability to move effectively across complex organizations.

Preferred Experience

Experience in advertising platforms, marketplaces, or SMB technology businesses.
Management consulting experience combined with substantial hands-on operating responsibility.
Experience in both established technology companies and startups.
Experience with outsourced sales channels, sales-assisted growth, or industry-specific commercial programs.

Workplace & Location

San Francisco, CA. This role requires a hybrid schedule with an in-office requirement from Monday - Wednesday.

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.

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We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link.

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At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.

SMB Innovation Sales & Strategy Lead

Job description