Culture & Community Communications lead

About the Team OpenAI’s Product & Research Communications team helps people understand our technology, what it makes possible, and how to use it. We bring new products and research to the world and tell stories about the people making these tools their own. We work closely with our Culture & Community Engagement team to connect our products with people’s interests, ambitions, and everyday lives. Together, we help more people discover what they can create, learn, and do with AI—and bring their experiences back into how we communicate. About the Role We’re looking for a Community Communications Lead to bring OpenAI’s products closer to communities and help their stories reach a wider audience. Sitting on the Product & Research Communications team, you’ll work hand in hand with the Culture & Community team to shape narratives, develop earned media opportunities, and amplify community-driven stories across organic communications channels. You’ll be involved from the beginning of campaigns and community programs, bringing ideas that strengthen the story, cultural relevance, and opportunities for participation. Working closely with Culture & Community Engagement leaders, you’ll contribute communications strategy while respecting their ownership of campaign and creative decisions. You’ll also connect individual campaigns, partnerships, and community moments into a broader story that develops over time. You’ll have the judgment to know when the work has earned a larger conversation—and the relationships and storytelling skills to make it happen. We’re looking for someone with cultural curiosity, strong editorial taste, initiative, judgment and an entrepreneurial approach. You understand what makes people care and how community trust is built. You keep our claims grounded, can navigate skepticism about AI and understand how a story can invite people to take part. This role can be based in San Francisco or New York. 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: - Be in the room as we shape the narrative. Help develop the story, cultural angle and earned comms opportunity from the beginning. Bring ideas that make the campaign itself stronger. - Think beyond a campaign to connect the multiple beats/campaigns into one overarching narrative for our Culture & Community Engagement team that resonates with press and creators. - Help AI move from subculture into pop and mass culture. Have the instincts and relationships to reach people through sport, music, design, food, fandom, etc. Understand what makes those audiences care and where they get their information. Build relationships with journalists, creators and cultural voices. - Find the stories inside our communities. Work closely with the community team to surface compelling builders, small businesses, students and unexpected people making the tools their own. Help them tell stories in their own voices, grounded in what they’re trying to achieve. - Make participation part of the story. A big ambition for us is giving people and communities things to create, learn and do together. Understand how storytelling can invite more people into that experience and how community contributions become the next chapter. - Sustain an ongoing narrative. Build a rhythm of stories across creator campaigns, community programs and partnerships. Keep the work interesting over months, through earned media and OpenAI’s communications channels. - Develop pitches, features, spokesperson opportunities, and channel content that connect individual stories to a larger narrative, supported by the work and its results. - Connect the work globally. Partner with regional comms and our territory leads so we have a clear shared story with locally relevant voices and cultural angles, supported by local examples. - Bring community perspectives and feedback into product communications planning, helping the team understand what resonates, what needs explanation, and where new stories are emerging. You might thrive in this role if you: - Have experience leading communications for consumer brands, cultural campaigns, creator initiatives, or community programs, with a track record of earning meaningful attention. - Have strong cultural instincts and relationships beyond technology media. You understand what different audiences care about, whom they trust, and where they get their information. - Are an excellent writer and editor who can find the larger story across several moments without losing the details that make each one distinctive. - Bring ideas early, have a clear point of view, and make work stronger through thoughtful collaboration. You can influence a direction while respecting others’ decision-making responsibilities. - Know how to work with community members and creators so their stories feel authentic, reflect their goals, and preserve their voices. - Think beyond announcements. You can build a narrative over months and recognize when there is enough substance for a deeper story. - Combine creative ambition with strong organization and follow-through. You can manage multiple programs, work independently, and adapt quickly as priorities change. - Build trusted relationships across communications, community, marketing, product, and regional teams. - Are curious about AI and how people use it, with a commitment to communicating both its possibilities and limitations accurately. 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 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. To notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant, please submit a report through this form https://form.asana.com/?d=57018692298241&k=5MqR40fZd7jlxVUh5J-UeA. No response will be provided to inquiries unrelated to job posting compliance. We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link https://form.asana.com/?k=bQ7w9h3iexRlicUdWRiwvg&d=57018692298241. OpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy https://cdn.openai.com/policies/global-employee-and-contractor-privacy-policy.pdf 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.