Professional Services Commercial Lead

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We are hiring a hands-on Professional Services Commercial Lead to own the end-to-end deal desk workflow for assigned DeployCo professional-services engagements.

The DeployCo Deal Desk helps turn customer deployment opportunities into clear, executable professional-services engagements, partnering across Deployment, Sales, Legal, Finance, Technical Revenue, and Operations to ensure every deal has well-defined scope, pricing aligned to approved guardrails, complete approvals, and a clean handoff to delivery.

You will personally draft and revise statements of work (SOWs), validate pricing and deal inputs, coordinate cross-functional reviews and approvals, and ensure commitments are clear, deliverable, and ready to execute. This is an individual-contributor role for an experienced contract manager, deal desk professional, or professional-services commercial operator who combines strong writing and commercial judgment with disciplined execution.

• Own assigned DeployCo deals from intake through approval, signature, and operational handoff.
• Draft and revise SOWs, work orders, and change orders using approved templates and playbooks; partner with Legal on non-standard contractual terms and redlines.
• Validate rate cards, fees, hours and resourcing inputs, discounts, margin inputs, billing milestones, and key deal data against approved inputs and guardrails.
• Coordinate reviews and approvals across Deployment, Sales, Legal, Finance, Technical Revenue, Billing, and Order Management.
• Identify and coordinate resolution of delivery and commercial risks, including unclear scope or acceptance criteria, infeasible commitments, scope creep, and downstream billing or revenue implications.
• Maintain accurate deal records, approval evidence, and status updates; ensure a clean post-signature handoff.
• Turn recurring issues into stronger templates, playbooks, approval paths, and workflow improvements.

• Typically 7+ years of relevant B2B experience across deal desk, commercial contracts or contract management, professional-services operations, sales operations, order management, or a similar function.
• 3+ years of substantial, hands-on experience drafting and revising customer-facing SOWs for professional-services engagements.
• Experience operating pricing-validation, commercial intake, approval, and routing workflows alongside contract drafting and review.
• Ability to translate technical or service requirements into contract-ready scope, deliverables, milestones, dependencies, acceptance criteria, and change controls.
• Working knowledge of quote-to-cash and how SOW structure and pricing affect delivery, billing, revenue recognition, and the customer experience.
• Clear, concise communication; excellent attention to detail; and the ability to manage multiple time-sensitive deals while influencing partners without formal authority.

• Experience as a contract manager supporting customer-facing professional services, consulting, implementation, or managed services.
• Experience in cloud, enterprise SaaS, AI, or another complex technology environment.
• Familiarity with fixed-fee, milestone-based, and time-and-materials services engagements.
• Experience with Salesforce or CPQ, contract-lifecycle-management tools, e-signature platforms, and approval workflow systems.
• A track record of improving SOW templates, commercial playbooks, or deal workflows.