Academic Research Partnerships & Programs Lead

About the role We are building a higher education researcher motion that helps funded labs adopt OpenAI across core research workflows. This role will develop relationships with principal investigators, researchers, research software engineers, research computing teams, and university technology leaders, then translate high-value use cases into sustained Pro, Codex, API, and ChatGPT Edu usage. This is a hybrid business development and program management role. You will identify and qualify priority labs, design phased access and fellows programs, run pilots, remove technical and institutional blockers, and create repeatable paths from individual researchers to lab- and institution-level adoption. Additionally, this role will launch and manage a community of researchers with events, communications and support.

In this role, you will:

• Build a pipeline of funded labs, research centers, and technical champions at priority R1 universities; qualify opportunities based on workflow value, funding path, influence, and expansion potential.
• Run discovery with researchers and university stakeholders to understand workflows, data and security needs, procurement constraints, and success criteria.