OpenAI Organizational Hierarchy

• CEO Leads overall company vision and strategy. Represents the company externally and ensures mission alignment. Oversees executive decisions and directs the leadership team.
  • President / Co-Founder (Reports to: CEO) Supports CEO in strategic planning and leadership. Oversees company-wide R&D, culture, and internal execution. Serves as a bridge across technical and operational teams.
  • CTO (Reports to: CEO) Leads all technical strategy and foundational model research. Oversees the development of infrastructure, AI architecture, and experimentation. Works closely with engineering and research leads.
    • VP of Engineering (Reports to: CTO) Leads the engineering team responsible for backend systems, APIs, and deployment. Ensures high reliability, performance, and scalability. Coordinates software delivery and infrastructure development.
      • Director of Infrastructure (Reports to: VP of Engineering) Manages compute clusters, storage, networking, and security. Supports massive training runs and live inference deployments.
      • Director of Deployment Engineering (Reports to: VP of Engineering) Oversees end-to-end deployment pipelines for models. Ensures smooth CI/CD for research and productization.
      • Site Reliability Engineers (Reports to: VP of Engineering) Monitor infrastructure health and handle incidents. Build tooling for observability and automation.
    • VP of Research (Reports to: CTO) Oversees long-term research programs including GPT and multimodal AI. Coordinates teams working on capabilities, scaling laws, and experimentation.
      • Director – Foundation Models (Reports to: VP of Research) Manages GPT model development and training pipelines. Drives innovation in pretraining, fine-tuning, and evaluation.
    • VP of Safety & Alignment (Reports to: CTO) Ensures AI behavior aligns with human intentions and safety principles. Leads safety-focused research and audits.
      • Director – Alignment Research (Reports to: VP of Safety & Alignment) Develops methods like RLHF, Constitutional AI, etc. Focuses on trustworthy and transparent models.
      • Director – Red Teaming (Reports to: VP of Safety & Alignment) Performs adversarial testing to uncover vulnerabilities. Runs simulations and robustness assessments.
      • Director – Policy Research (Reports to: VP of Safety & Alignment) Studies regulation, ethics, social impact of AI deployment. Guides policy recommendations and whitepapers.
  • Chief Product Officer (Reports to: CEO) Shapes product roadmap and strategy. Coordinates product teams on ChatGPT, APIs, enterprise tools. Liaises with design, engineering, and GTM teams.
    • Director – ChatGPT Product (Reports to: CPO) Manages core ChatGPT app experience. Implements features, usage tracking, personalization.
    • Director – API Product (Reports to: CPO) Leads OpenAI API offerings, pricing, and developer experience. Handles feedback and use case optimization.
    • Director – Enterprise Solutions (Reports to: CPO) Customizes AI solutions for Fortune 500 clients. Supports security, compliance, and integration.
  • VP of Design (Reports to: CEO) Leads UI/UX design across all products. Creates seamless, accessible, and elegant user experiences.
    • UX Designers (Reports to: VP of Design) Design user flows, mockups, and usability testing.
    • UI Designers (Reports to: VP of Design) Refine visual identity and interface components.
  • VP of Communications (Reports to: CEO) Manages public relations, brand strategy, and media. Maintains trust through transparency and documentation.
    • PR Managers (Reports to: VP of Communications) Handle journalist relations and interview coordination.
    • Technical Writers (Reports to: VP of Communications) Publish changelogs, technical blog posts, documentation.
  • VP of Partnerships & Enterprise (Reports to: CEO) Oversees strategic partnerships (e.g., Microsoft). Coordinates sales and enterprise deployments.
    • Strategic Partnership Managers (Reports to: VP of Partnerships) Engage with key clients and collaborators.
    • Enterprise Account Executives (Reports to: VP of Partnerships) Drive adoption and expansion within enterprise clients.
  • VP of People / HR (Reports to: CEO) Leads recruiting, culture, onboarding, DEI. Ensures long-term team health and policy compliance.
    • Recruiters (Reports to: VP of People) Attract top-tier engineering and research talent.
    • HR Coordinators (Reports to: VP of People) Support onboarding, payroll, benefits, and documentation.
    • DEI Leads (Reports to: VP of People) Promote inclusive hiring, training, and retention.

OpenAI Roles Hierarchy Tree