Senior Manager, Customs and Trade Operations

About the Role

We’re hiring a Sr. Manager, Customs and Trade Operations to lead OpenAI’s global import customs strategy and operating model. This is a senior role with broad scope across hardware sourcing, development-stage materials, supplier onboarding, landed-cost design, broker strategy, and cross-border execution. You will refine how OpenAI governs import classification, customs valuation, country of origin, importer structure, broker operating models, documentation standards, and shipment decisioning in a way that supports the company’s pace of technical development and global operations.

You will also shape how OpenAI applies AI and agentic workflows to policy-heavy import work, building systems that make complex rules easier to navigate, easier to execute, and easier to scale.

This role is based in San Francisco, CA. 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

• Refine the strategy and operating model for OpenAI’s import customs program, embedding customs, tariff, and cross-border considerations into sourcing, development-stage materials, supplier operations, and logistics.
• Own governance for HTS classification, customs valuation, and country of origin, including decision quality, substantiation, supplier data requirements, broker handoff standards, escalation paths, and reusable knowledge.
• Partner with Engineering, Procurement and Strategic Finance to build durable landed-cost, tariff-impact, and importer-structure decision models that support global sourcing and planning.
• Lead broker strategy and operating standards across customs brokers, freight forwarders, and trade-advisory partners, including performance management, escalation management, and execution quality.
• Build and scale import documentation, recordkeeping, and supplier-onboarding requirements for customs-critical data, including commercial invoices, packing lists, broker packets, entry support, prototype claims, and audit-ready files.
• Partner with technical and operations teams to support compliant cross-border movement of development-stage materials and related operational workflows.
• Establish customs-related policies, SOPs, training, metrics, SLAs, and escalation paths that reduce avoidable friction and improve execution quality across the import lifecycle.
• Partner with Legal, Tax, and Business on origin analysis, tariff monitoring, trade controversy, importer setup, and new market entry.
• Build internal tooling and AI-enabled workflows that improve triage, document review, knowledge retrieval, recurring decision support, operational reporting, and overall program scale.

You might thrive in this role if you

• A Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience in international trade operations, trade law, cross-border ecommerce.
• Significant experience leading import customs, trade operations, or a closely related function in electronics, semiconductors, robotics, advanced hardware, manufacturing, or other high-technology domains.
• Deep expertise in trade law including import classification, customs valuation, country of origin, prototype and temporary-import frameworks, broker management, and customs documentation controls.
• Direct experience supporting hardware development processes, sourcing, supplier onboarding, landed-cost analysis, and cross-border execution in a fast-moving product environment.
• Strong judgment and a track record of building and scaling programs in multinational, ambiguous, and rapidly evolving operating environments.
• Experience translating customs and trade requirements into workflows, systems requirements, service levels, operating guidance, and measurable business outcomes.
• The ability to work credibly with procurement leaders, hardware engineers, manufacturing partners, brokers, finance stakeholders, legal partners, and operations teams.
• Experience managing service providers and cross-functional programs that require speed, discretion, and strong execution.
• Strong writing and communication skills, with the ability to turn complex customs requirements into clear process documentation and practical guidance.
• Experience building AI-enabled workflows, internal tools, knowledge systems, or agentic processes for policy-heavy or operational work.