Senior Manager, Occupancy Planning & Workplace Strategy

About the Team

OpenAI’s Real Estate & Workplace (REW) team creates and operates the spaces that support our people and our mission. Within REW, the Strategic Occupancy Planning team connects business needs, workplace strategy, and space data to help shape where and how our teams work.

We partner closely with business leaders, Finance, People, Workplace Operations, and Design & Construction to anticipate growth, optimize space utilization, and deliver a thoughtful, scalable workplace experience.

About the Role

We’re looking for an experienced Occupancy Planning & Workplace Strategy Manager to lead strategic space planning for our Go-to-Market (GTM) and General & Administrative (G&A) organizations.

In this role, you’ll translate evolving business needs into actionable occupancy strategies, capacity scenarios, and workplace recommendations. You’ll serve as a trusted partner to business leaders, balancing growth projections, operational requirements, and employee experience to inform decisions about how our teams use space.

You’ll own planning across a complex, evolving portfolio while leveraging CAFM/IWMS systems and data analytics to drive accurate, scalable decision-making. This role requires a combination of strategic thinking, hands-on technical expertise, and strong cross-functional partnership to turn planning recommendations into operational outcomes.

This role is based in San Francisco. We use a hybrid work model of three days in the office per week, with approximately 10 - 20% travel.

In This Role, You Will

• Own strategic occupancy planning for GTM and G&A organizations, translating headcount forecasts, business priorities, and workplace needs into actionable space plans.

• Develop and evaluate capacity scenarios, neighborhood strategies, team adjacencies, seating models, and space allocation recommendations to support organizational growth.

• Partner with business leaders and executive stakeholders to understand evolving requirements, communicate trade-offs, and align workplace strategies with business objectives.

• Collaborate with Finance, People, Analytics, Design & Construction, and Workplace Operations to reconcile forecasts, assess capacity constraints, and guide planning decisions through implementation.

• Translate workplace needs into practical stacking, blocking, and move plans, ensuring recommendations account for operational feasibility, timing, and employee experience.

• Leverage CAFM/IWMS platforms and analytical tools to maintain accurate space inventories, floor plans, seating allocations, and utilization data.

• Identify and resolve space data discrepancies, establish quality controls, and partner with internal system owners and external vendors to improve data reliability.

• Develop dashboards, planning workflows, and reporting tools that improve visibility into occupancy trends, capacity risks, and portfolio performance.

• Drive continuous improvement in occupancy planning processes, including opportunities for automation, system enhancements, and scalable planning practices.

• Support workplace change initiatives by partnering with cross-functional teams to ensure clear communication, coordinated execution, and successful transitions.

You Might Thrive in This Role If You

• Bring 5 - 8+ years of experience in occupancy planning, workplace strategy, space management, or a related field, with experience independently managing complex, multi-team or multi-site portfolios.

• Have a strong track record of translating business growth, headcount projections, and workplace requirements into practical, data-informed space strategies.

• Possess hands-on experience with CAFM/IWMS platforms, including space inventory management, floor plans, seating allocations, data reconciliation, and reporting.

• Are highly analytical and comfortable developing scenarios, evaluating trade-offs, and translating complex data into clear recommendations for senior stakeholders.

• Excel at building trusted relationships with business leaders and cross-functional partners, influencing decisions without direct authority.

• Can balance long-term strategic planning with hands-on execution in a fast-paced environment where priorities and requirements evolve quickly.

• Have experience supporting workplace transitions, flexible seating strategies, organizational growth, or large-scale space planning initiatives.

• Communicate clearly and effectively, whether presenting recommendations to executives, documenting planning assumptions, or coordinating implementation across teams.

• Are comfortable navigating ambiguity, identifying opportunities for process improvement, and building scalable solutions.

Experience with OfficeSpace or comparable CAFM/IWMS platforms, CAD or floor-plan tools, business intelligence platforms, system migrations, and vendor management is a plus.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity.

We are an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.

For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action Policy.

Applicants with disabilities may be entitled to reasonable accommodations. Requests for reasonable accommodations can be made via our accommodation request process.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity.

We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.

Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

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