Personnel Security Specialist

About the Team

The Industrial Security team enables OpenAI’s 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.

About the Role

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.

We’re 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.

In this role, you will:

• 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.

You might thrive in this role if you:

• 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.

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.

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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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