Agent Standards Specialist, Global Affairs
Remote • Washington, DC • FullTime
Posted 9d ago
About the job
OpenAI is seeking an Agent Standards Manager to lead the execution of its external technical standards strategy for agent standards. As AI agents evolve to take actions across the internet, establishing clear standards for identity, delegated authority, discovery, communications, commerce, payment interfaces, web access, provenance, and auditability is crucial for safe, interoperable, and accountable operation. This role involves translating OpenAI's technical architecture and controls into credible specifications and protocols, while also gathering external requirements to inform product and security roadmaps. It's a builder's role focused on executing a prioritized standards plan, authoring and negotiating protocols, building coalitions, and representing OpenAI in technical forums, with the goal of creating repeatable processes for shaping agent standards.
Responsibilities
- Own a focused workstream plan for core agent identity, discovery, and delegated-authorization standards, with adjacent work on agentic-commerce, web-access, provenance, and auditability.
- Recommend OpenAI's strategic approach (lead, shape, monitor, oppose, decline) within assigned workstreams based on technical maturity, governance, strategic leverage, and company priorities.
- Develop technical standards positions and normative contributions that clearly distinguish between human/service principals, agents, workloads, tasks, sessions, resources, and policies.
- Shape requirements for scoped delegation, attenuation, step-up approval, revocation, credential custody, runtime binding, discovery, interoperability, agent-specific provenance, and auditable action trails.
- Collaborate with Agent Security and Applied/Platform teams to translate internal architecture and controls into technically credible specifications, profiles, white papers, and assurance evidence.
- Lead review and approval processes across Product, Security, Engineering, Legal, GRC, Global Affairs, and GTM, maintaining clear mandates, red lines, owners, dependencies, and commitments.
- Represent OpenAI in priority technical venues and coalitions (e.g., IETF, OAuth, FIDO, OIDF, W3C, AAIF, NIST, ISO), building trust with peers and stakeholders.
- Integrate external standards intelligence into product, security, compliance, and go-to-market decisions to shape roadmaps and avoid friction.
- Contribute reusable playbooks, decision records, contribution patterns, and handoffs to reduce key-person risk in standards workstreams.
Requirements
- Strong experience in technical standards, internet protocols, identity and access management, security architecture, applied cryptography, or related product/infrastructure work.
- Proven ability to author, edit, or materially shape normative specifications, profiles, drafts, or conformance requirements in technical standards or open-source governance settings.
- Clear reasoning about OAuth, OIDC, FIDO, WebAuthn, workload identity, HTTP signatures, delegated authority, credential lifecycle, revocation, provenance, and auditability.
- Understanding that agent trust is a composed stack and the ability to differentiate between principal, agent, runtime, task, session, resource, and policy claims.
- Ability to distinguish between adopted standards, stable extensions, active drafts, working-group proposals, and exploratory ideas, and understand how maturity impacts OpenAI's posture.
- Skill in building trust with engineers and security leaders while communicating effectively with lawyers, product leaders, executives, policymakers, and external standards participants.
- Strong judgment in ambiguous, high-stakes environments, knowing when to lead, compromise, oppose, escalate, or withdraw.
- Clear writing and constructive negotiation skills.
- Comfort representing OpenAI externally with discretion.