Senior Operations Analyst, User Safety & Risk Operations

About the Team

At OpenAI, our User Safety & Risk Operations (USRO) team helps protect our products and users from abuse, fraud, safety risks, and other forms of misuse. We translate real-world user and operational signals into timely decisions, practical interventions, and improvements to our products and systems.

This role will take on new, ambiguous, or underdeveloped operational risks and help mature them into scalable capabilities. We work across USRO and partner closely with Product, Engineering, Data Science, Product Policy, Legal, Safety, Support, and external vendors or partnership stakeholders.

About the Role

We are seeking a Senior Operations Analyst to take on complex, ambiguous safety and risk problems and turn them into practical operational solutions that can scale. This is a senior individual-contributor role for a versatile operator who is comfortable moving between queues, investigation, analysis, workflow design, hands-on execution, and cross-functional leadership. Depending on team needs, the role may focus on emerging-risk incubation, cloud deployment partnerships, or other new operational areas.

You will be expected to move quickly, work hands-on, and create structure without waiting for perfect requirements or a large support team. The work starts with the problem, not a prescribed process. You may investigate unstructured user signals, stand up a lightweight workflow, build an AI-assisted tool, improve an existing operation, or help a new launch become operationally ready. The goal is to produce durable systems that other people can run, not simply complete a series of individual tasks.

The portfolio will change with company priorities and may span established harm areas, emerging-risk incubation, cloud deployments and partnerships, device safety, or new product launches. Some hires may focus primarily on cloud deployment operations, including launch readiness, partner coordination, safety workflows, and operational monitoring. You will typically own a small number of high-impact problems at a time and will be expected to judge what needs to be built, what can stay lightweight, and when the work is ready to scale, transfer, or stop.

Location / work model: San Francisco, CA; hybrid, 3 days/week in-office.

Please note: This role may involve exposure to sensitive or concerning content. Strong discretion, good judgment, and resilience are essential.

In This Role, You Will

- Take ownership of ambiguous, high-priority safety and risk problems: define the problem, gather the right evidence, choose a practical path, drive execution, and close the loop.

- Analyze structured and unstructured data, both quantitative and qualitative. This may include user reports, case narratives, conversations, escalations, and operational metrics to identify patterns, risks, and the highest-leverage interventions.

- Build and test lightweight workflows, tools, automations, and decision aids that improve speed, quality, and consistency, then iterate based on real-world use.

- Turn one-off insights and manual work into scalable operating mechanisms without adding unnecessary process or complexity.

- Lead sensitive investigations, incident response, or launch-readiness work, including safety workflows, human review, escalation paths, partner coordination, and operational monitoring for product launches or cloud deployments.

- Work directly with cross-functional and external partners to clarify ownership, resolve operational gaps, and turn incomplete signals into clear recommendations and decisions.

- Measure whether the work is improving outcomes—such as quality, speed, coverage, operator effort, or risk reduction—and adjust quickly when it is not.

- Help junior operators build judgment and independence through coaching, calibration, and reusable tools.

You Might Thrive in This Role If You

- Have 8+ years of experience in trust and safety operations, investigations, incident response, product operations, t …