Director, AI Opportunity Development

About Civil Society and Philanthropy

Civil Society and Philanthropy is a new OpenAI Foundation team dedicated to putting advanced AI to work on challenges facing people and communities globally.

We will partner with nonprofit and civil society organizations and governments around the world, putting in place the resources needed to ensure AI can meaningfully support their work. We combine philanthropic investment, technical expertise, and convening power to work alongside trusted partners that deliver essential services across geographies and issue areas. Together, we identify opportunities where AI can strengthen their work, expand their reach, and tangibly benefit their communities.

We're starting with three areas:

• Put AI to work in essential services where it can meaningfully improve access and outcomes.
• Give civil society organizations the tools, expertise, and support to adopt AI responsibly.
• Build shared infrastructure so that successful tools and lessons can benefit the entire social sector.

We believe the most meaningful applications of AI will be shaped not by technology companies alone, but by the teachers, clinicians, legal advocates, public servants, researchers, governments, and community organizations applying these tools to solve real-world problems.

About the role

What socially valuable uses of AI are becoming possible, and are ready to become real products, services, or organizations?

This is a senior opportunity-scouting and diligence role. You will range across AI research and the builder ecosystem, civil society, government, philanthropy, and communities to surface emerging capabilities, unmet needs, promising ideas, and exceptional teams. You will determine which opportunities are technically credible, socially valuable, differentiated, and positioned for meaningful adoption.

Relationships are important, but this is not primarily a partnerships role. The core requirement is the technical and product judgment to distinguish an exciting idea from one that is not yet feasible, useful, or ready. You will make the strongest opportunities concrete enough for the Foundation to decide what should happen next - fund existing work, engage a partner, commission a prototype, recruit a builder, support a new organization, or stop.

In this role, you will:

• Build a high-quality opportunity pipeline. Develop trusted relationships with AI researchers, engineers, founders, nonprofit leaders, public servants, domain experts, funders, and frontline organizations; use those conversations to surface ideas and capabilities that others may be overlooking.
• Track the frontier and connect it to real needs. Stay current on rapidly changing AI capabilities, limitations, costs, and implementation patterns, and identify where they create newly possible approaches to consequential social problems.
• Turn signals into concrete opportunity theses. Define the intended user, problem, proposed intervention, source of value, differentiation, risks, and path to adoption so that a broad idea can be evaluated and acted on.
• Conduct technical and strategic diligence. Assess model fit, data and infrastructure requirements, safety, cost, organizational readiness, distribution, durability, and potential for scale; distinguish what can be built now from what requires further technical progress.
• Pressure-test opportunities in the field. Work with prospective users, practitioners, and domain experts through interviews, workshops, and field visits to validate demand, surface constraints, and understand how a solution would need to fit existing systems.
• Recommend the path to execution. For the strongest opportunities, identify who should build, what resources and partners are required, and what structure best fits; present clear fund, partner, prototype, recruit, incubate, revisit, or stop recommendations. Help establish a repeatable scouting and diligence approach for the Foundation.

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Bring deep technical judgment about AI. You understand current model capabilities and limitations, can interrogate technical claims, and can assess feasibility credibly with engineers and researchers.
• Have built technology or products. You have enough first-hand 0-to-1 experience to understand what makes an idea buildable, where execution usually fails, and what a strong founding or product team needs.
• See important possibilities early. You are intellectually curious, follow weak signals across disciplines, and connect emerging technical capabilities to problems that may not yet have obvious solutions.
• Run ideas down with rigor. You know how to move from an intriguing conversation to evidence: finding the right experts, testing assumptions, synthesizing conflicting information, and identifying the decisive unknowns.
• Exercise strong portfolio judgment. You can compare many interesting opportunities, prioritize the few that matter most, and stop work when the evidence does not support further investment.
• Move fluently across worlds. You can earn trust with technical builders, institutional leaders, frontline organizations, and communities, then translate what you learn into precise recommendations for technical and nontechnical audiences.
• Care deeply about public benefit. You bring sound judgment about safety, equity, local context, and the responsibilities that come with deploying technology in people's lives.

What success looks like

Success is not the number of conversations held or ideas collected. It is the quality of the opportunity pipeline, the rigor of the assessment, and the ability to turn promising signals into decisions the Foundation can act on.

During this term, we expect a prioritized portfolio of opportunity theses; technical and field evidence for the strongest ideas; clear recommendations about what the Foundation should fund, partner on, prototype, recruit for, incubate, revisit, or stop; and an identified execution path for opportunities that advance. The role should also leave behind a trusted network and a practical scouting and diligence playbook.

Role details and resources

This role reports to the Head of Civil Society and Philanthropy. It is a fixed-term, 12-18 month role, with the possibility of extension. The role is based in San Francisco and may require up to 40% travel for field work and business meetings.

This person will have access to the Foundation's emerging AI Product and Engineering team, grants and partnerships colleagues, external experts, substantial compute and API credits, and internal support for research, convenings, technical diligence, and targeted prototypes or other validation work. The role is responsible for finding and advancing the right opportunities; it is not expected to personally build every product it identifies.

Compensation

The annual base salary range for this role is $250,000 to $300,000 USD.

This range reflects our good-faith estimate of the base salary we reasonably expect to pay for this position upon hire. Actual base salary will be determined based on job-related factors, including the candidate’s relevant experience, skills, expertise, the scope of the role, and work location, as applicable.

This salary range does not include benefits or any other compensation for which the role may be eligible.

Equal Opportunity

We are an equal opportunity employer and do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability or any other legally protected status. Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.