IT Software Architect, SaaS Enablement and Governance

About the Team

The SaaS and Software Governance team sits within Corporate IT and helps OpenAI scale from startup-speed tooling to mature enterprise architecture. The team owns practical governance for software, SaaS, integrations, APIs, identity, data access, and agent-enabled workflows, with a mandate to improve security, reduce software sprawl, and help business teams move faster through better foundations.

About the Team

OpenAI is scaling from an emerging, high-velocity startup into a mature enterprise operating model. The IT Software Architect will help shape the software, SaaS, Data integration, and agent-enabled architecture that lets the company move quickly while improving security, compliance, data quality, and customer, partner, and employee experience.

This role is not a traditional ivory-tower architecture function. It is a hands-on governance and enablement role that partners with business teams, IT operations, Security, Procurement, Business Platforms, Applied teams and Data Engineering to guide software decisions, reduce unmanaged sprawl, and build reusable enterprise foundations.

Why This Role Matters

OpenAI’s software footprint is expanding rapidly across SaaS, internally built tools, agents, integrations, APIs, third-party platforms, and application systems that OpenAI. The company needs a stronger tools architecture layer that can help teams make good decisions early, avoid duplicate tools, govern sensitive data and identities, and identify where OpenAI should build instead of buy.

The person in this role will help turn software governance from an approval checkpoint into an enterprise capability: a system that improves speed, reliability, security, and business outcomes.

What You'll Do

- Own the target architecture for enterprise software, SaaS, integrations, APIs, and agent-enabled business systems across Corporate IT. Drive deprecation and consolidate targets for enterprise software.

- Build lightweight governance patterns that guide teams before software and integration decisions become hard to unwind.

- Create architecture standards for identity, access, data movement, API usage, admin rights, auditability, observability, and vendor integration.

- Partner with Security to ensure software architecture addresses SSO, SCIM, MFA, privileged access, non-human identities, secrets, token storage, data residency, encryption, retention, and incident response readiness.

- Partner with Procurement and Finance to evaluate renewals, rationalization opportunities, enterprise agreements, and build-versus-buy decisions.

- Partner deeply with application verticals such as GTM, Finance, Legal, HR, Research, Product, and Operations teams to evaluate agentic business workflows and translate them into scalable enterprise system patterns.

- Review proposed SaaS and internally built tools for overlap, risk, integration quality, ownership, lifecycle, supportability, and long-term fit.

- Develop reusable architecture blueprints for common capabilities such as intake, workflow, approvals, knowledge management, customer/partner 360, data integration, reporting, content management, learning, surveys, and collaboration.

- Help define where OpenAI-native GPT or agent-built solutions should replace or enable point SaaS tools.

- Create clear decision records and architecture artifacts that are understandable by business leaders, engineers, security reviewers, and procurement partners.

- Drive software catalog maturity by connecting tool inventory, business owner, system owner, integration path, data classification, access model, renewal, risk posture, and support model.

Core Architecture Domains

- SaaS governance and software catalog maturity

- Enterprise integration architecture, including APIs, event flows, middleware, and system-of-record boundaries

- Identity, access, and admin model design across internal and external users

- Data architecture for SaaS, customer, supplier, employee, partner …