Agent Standards Specialist, Global Affairs

OpenAI’s mission is to ensure that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We believe that achieving our goal requires effective engagement with public policy stakeholders and the broader community impacted by AI. Accordingly, our Global Affairs team builds authentic, collaborative relationships with public officials and the broader AI policymaking community to inform and support our shared work in these domains. We ensure that insights from policymakers inform our work and – in collaboration with our colleagues and external stakeholders – seek to shape policy so that it aligns with and supports our mission.

As AI agents move from answering questions to taking action across the internet, the standards that govern identity, delegated authority, discovery, communications, agentic-commerce and payment interfaces, agent-facing web access, agent-specific provenance, and auditability will determine whether agents can operate safely, interoperably, and with clear accountability. OpenAI is looking for an Agent Standards Manager to lead execution of our external technical standards strategy for a defined set of agent standards workstreams. This role will work closely with Agent Security, Applied and Platform teams, Product, Legal, GRC, Global Affairs, and GTM to turn OpenAI’s technical architecture and controls into credible specifications, protocol profiles, assurance criteria, and implementation guidance—and to bring emerging external requirements back into product and security roadmaps before they become blockers. The positions developed here are technical standards positions, not broad public-policy positions. This is a builder’s role as much as an external-facing role. You will execute a prioritized standards plan, author and negotiate protocols, build coalitions, secure the right internal approvals, and represent OpenAI in assigned technical forums. You will also help create repeatable processes that let the company shape agent standards without depending on a single person or relying on technical teams to carry external standards work on top of their core jobs. The Agent Standards Manager is an integrator, not the owner of every underlying technical system. Security, Product, Engineering, and other designated technical teams retain ownership of architecture, threat models, controls, product decisions, approvals, and implementation. This role owns workstream planning, standards translation, drafting, negotiation, external representation within approved mandates, commitment traceability, and implementation handoff. In this role, you will: Own a focused workstream plan for core agent identity, discovery, and delegated-authorization standards, with adjacent agentic-commerce, web-access, provenance, and auditability work assigned through portfolio prioritization. Recommend where OpenAI should lead, shape, monitor, oppose, or decline to participate within the assigned workstream, based on technical maturity, governance quality, strategic leverage, implementation readiness, and company priorities. Develop technical standards positions and normative contributions that preserve distinctions among the human or service principal, agent, workload or runtime, task, session, resource, and policy decision. Shape requirements for scoped delegation, attenuation, step-up approval, revocation, credential custody, runtime binding, discovery, interoperability, agent-specific provenance, and auditable action trails. Embed with Agent Security and Applied or Platform teams to translate internal architecture and controls into technically credible specifications, profiles, white papers, and assurance evidence without overstating maturity or deployment status. Lead review and approval paths across Product, Security, Engineering, Legal, GRC, Global Affairs, and GTM; maintain clear mandates, red lines, owners, dependencies, and external commitments. Represent OpenAI in priority venues and