This Personnel Security Specialist job is with OpenAI in California or Washington. It is a hybrid full-time role, so plan on splitting your week between home and the office. The advertised pay is $126,000 to $175,000 a year.
OpenAI describes the job as follows.
The Industrial Security team enables OpenAIโs classified and national security work by building secure, compliant programs that support government customers and protect sensitive information. Within Industrial Security, the Personnel Security function ensures employees have the clearances, accesses, briefings, and government approvals required to support classified programs. We work closely with employees, program teams, government customers, and partners across Security, People, Recruiting, Legal, IT, and Facilities to make complex security processes accurate, timely, and understandable.
As a Personnel Security Specialist, you will own the day-to-day personnel security operations that allow OpenAI employees to support classified government work. You will manage clearance and access requests, maintain government-system records, coordinate visits and briefings, support onboarding and offboarding, and guide employees through sensitive security requirements with discretion and care.
Weโre looking for a hands-on security professional who can independently manage a high-volume operational queue, keep cases and records organized, recognize when issues require escalation, and improve the processes behind the work. This role offers the opportunity to help build a modern personnel security function that supports important national security programs while delivering a thoughtful, responsive employee experience.
This role is based in San Francisco, CA, or Washington, DC. We use a hybrid work model of three days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees. Additional onsite presence and occasional travel may be required based on classified program and government customer needs.
Own the daily personnel security workload from intake through completion, including clearance verification, access nominations, visit requests, onboarding, offboarding, briefings, and reporting actions.
Process and track personnel eligibility, classified access, indoctrinations, debriefings, customer approvals, and other program-specific security requirements.
Maintain accurate, current, and audit-ready records in DISS, NBIS/eApp, NISS, internal tracking systems, and other applicable government or customer platforms.
Guide employees through security forms, clearance and access requirements, required briefings, and reportable events while protecting sensitive personal information.
Coordinate personnel security actions with government security representatives, customer security offices, program teams, and internal partners across Security, People, Recruiting, Legal, and IT.
Prepare and manage visit authorization requests, security access requests, and related customer access packages, including CAC, NIPR, SIPR, and SAAR documentation when applicable.
Identify discrepancies, aging cases, missing documentation, potential security concerns, and reportable information, escalating sensitive or complex issues promptly and appropriately.
Maintain clear visibility into case ownership, status, deadlines, next steps, and government or customer dependencies.
Develop and improve checklists, standard operating procedures, templates, metrics, and workflows that reduce backlog, manual effort, and missed handoffs.
Support self-inspections, customer reviews, recurring reporting, and broader efforts to build a scalable, reliable personnel security program.
Have hands-on personnel security experience supporting a cleared defense contractor, Intelligence Community organization, federal customer, or comparable classified environment.
Have directly managed clearance verification, access processing, indoctrinations, debriefings, visit requests, security briefings, and onboarding or offboarding for cleared personnel.
Have working experience with DISS and NBIS/eApp; familiarity with NISS, SWFT, Scattered Castles, or customer-specific security systems is a plus.
Understand the NISPOM, applicable Security Executive Agent Directives, and government or customer personnel security requirements.
Are highly organized and can manage competing priorities, sensitive records, recurring deadlines, and a high-volume case queue without losing accuracy.
Communicate clearly and respectfully, particularly when explaining complex requirements or supporting employees through sensitive and sometimes frustrating processes.
Demonstrate discretion with personal information and sound judgment about when to involve security leadership, Legal, People, or government security officials.
Look for practical ways to improve operational reliability through documentation, metrics, templates, and approved AI tools, agents, and automations, while protecting sensitive information and preserving required human review and security judgment.
Have experience supporting SCI or SAP access, customer-specific nominations, visit authorization requests, or related access packages.
Hold active Top Secret eligibility and current SCI access, and can obtain and maintain any customer-required polygraph or additional access approvals.
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 OpenAIโs 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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OpenAI advertises $126,000 to $175,000 a year for this role.
It is hybrid. You would work partly from home and partly from the office in California or Washington.
The posting mentions skills such as SAP, Recruiting and Onboarding. Read the full description above for the complete list.
Use the apply button on this page. It takes you to OpenAI's own application form, so your CV goes directly to their hiring team.
OpenAI published the role on September 4, 2026. We check the employer's job board every day and take this page down when the role closes, so if you can read it, the job was still listed at our last check.
Source: OpenAI careers page (jobs.ashbyhq.com). Applications go straight to the employer. We check the listing daily and remove it once it closes.
OpenAI publishes its open roles on its own careers board. This page collects the OpenAI jobs that are live right now. Each listing links to OpenAI's application form, and we remove a listing once the employer closes it.
Industry: Technology
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