Trade Compliance Lead

About the Team

Tax and Trade helps shape how OpenAI brings new technologies to the world. We help build the foundations for global expansion and new hardware businesses, combining expertise in tax, customs and export controls with creative problem-solving.

Our work brings together technology, regulation and global commerce. We solve new problems with teams across OpenAI and use data, AI and automation to support a growing business. Joining the team means helping turn ambitious ideas into products and capabilities that reach people around the world.

Based in Dublin, Ireland, with a hybrid schedule of three office days each week. Relocation support is available for new hires.

About the Role

You will build and run OpenAI’s trade compliance program across Europe. Your remit spans cross-border shipping routes, partner and supplier arrangements, daily trade operations and compliance oversight for the legal entities involved. You will work with Legal, direct tax and indirect tax teams to design structures that meet trade requirements while improving cost and speed. We are looking for someone who can build from the ground up, make sound business decisions and stay close to execution. You will also help set a new benchmark for how trade compliance programs use AI to improve decisions, strengthen controls and support growth.

In this role, you will:

• Design compliant trading and supply-chain structures with Legal, direct tax and indirect tax teams. Evaluate company, transaction, partner and supplier arrangements to improve cost, speed and operating reliability.

• Build the European trade compliance program and launch cross-border shipping routes. Put customs, import, export, sanctions and cross-border e-commerce requirements into workable processes.

• Own ongoing European import, export and returns operations, including customs warehousing where needed. Manage brokers and service providers, resolve issues and maintain reliable service as volume and complexity grow.

• Set and test compliance policies and controls for each legal entity. Maintain required authorizations, respond to rule changes, prepare for audits, resolve gaps and report risks to leaders.

• Personally manage relationships with customs and other trade authorities. Work with Legal to defend compliance positions and programs, respond to audits and inquiries, and resolve issues.

• Use AI to improve trade analysis, document review and ongoing monitoring. Build and test these processes, retain human review and decision records, and measure gains in accuracy and speed.

• Use shipment, inventory and customs data to investigate problems and compare options. Define the data and systems the program needs, and track whether processes and controls work.

• Bring business, supply chain, Finance, Tax, Legal and technology teams together to turn strategy into clear procedures, training and measurable operating improvements.

You might thrive in this role if you have:

• Deep European customs expertise, including EU customs law, classification, valuation, origin and importer/exporter responsibilities. Practical experience applying different customs valuation methods and a working knowledge of import, export and sanctions requirements.

• A record of building trade programs from the ground up and making business decisions that balance compliance, cost, speed and operating needs, in partnership with Legal and Tax.

• Direct experience managing hardware imports and bonded warehouse compliance across multiple European countries. Personal responsibility for decisions, controls and ongoing operations.

• Experience personally managing regulatory relationships and defending compliance programs, positions and actions in reviews, audits or inquiries.

• Ability to investigate detailed data, question assumptions and recommend action. Practical experience using AI tools and checking their outputs.

• Experience leading work across internal teams, partners and suppliers, including European cross-border e-commerce requirements and the processes needed to meet them.

• Sound judgment, personal accountability and clear communication when facts or requirements are uncertain; a relevant degree or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred signals

• Experience applying European indirect tax law alongside customs law to design effective cross-border structures.

• Experience managing trade compliance at the volume and complexity of a global supply chain.

• Experience with major device or semiconductor manufacturers, technology businesses or Big Four trade advisory teams, combining strategy with direct responsibility for execution.

• Experience introducing AI, trade software or enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems into daily operations, with measured improvements in accuracy, risk detection or processing time.

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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