Senior Counsel, France

About the Team

OpenAI’s Legal team supports OpenAI’s mission by addressing complex legal issues arising from the development and deployment of AI. The team brings together expertise in commercial, corporate, employment, privacy, intellectual property, regulatory, tax and litigation matters, and works closely with teams across the company.

About the Role

We’re seeking an experienced, hands-on lawyer to serve as our country lawyer for France, providing broad legal support for our local office with a primary focus on regulatory and policy legal matters affecting OpenAI’s products, operations and business.

You will advise on French and EU regulatory developments, develop practical legal positions and recommendations, and support OpenAI’s engagement with French regulators and policymakers. Working closely with EMEA and global legal colleagues, as well as policy and regulatory affairs teams, you will take ownership of assigned French matters, translate complex legal questions into actionable advice and help ensure that our approach in France is consistent with OpenAI’s wider legal positions.

Alongside your primary focus, you will also provide broader French country legal support, coordinating with specialist teams on local business and operational matters.

We’re looking for someone who can take responsibility for matters, give practical advice, manage competing priorities and bring cross-functional work to a decision. You will work closely with EMEA and global legal colleagues, GA and Policy leaders, applying established specialist guidance, approval processes and escalation routes.

In this role, you will:

• Advise on regulatory developments and their business implications. Assess existing and emerging French and EU laws, enforcement developments and policy proposals affecting OpenAI. Develop legal positions and practical recommendations, working with GA, Policy, Regulatory, Product, Privacy and other legal teams to translate requirements into action. Serve as a trusted legal partner to local leadership and business teams on the establishment, expansion and day-to-day operation of our French presence. Identify legal dependencies early and translate them into practical options and implementation plans.

• Support regulatory and policy engagement. Partner with GA, Policy and legal colleagues to prepare for and participate in engagements with French and EU regulators, policymakers and local government. Develop legal analysis, briefing materials, consultation responses and legal input into policy positions, coordinating with the relevant EMEA and global teams.

• Support French business initiatives. Advise on local partnerships, research and university collaborations, marketing, events and other commercial initiatives, working with Commercial, Product, IP, Privacy and Regulatory Legal as appropriate.

• Provide coordinated French country legal support. Serve as a local legal partner on French business and operational matters, including local governance, office development, employment and workplace compliance. Identify legal requirements, involve the appropriate specialist teams and help take agreed actions through to implementation, maintaining clear ownership and alignment with OpenAI’s global operating framework.

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Have a law degree (Master 2 in Law, Bac+5, or equivalent) and substantial experience advising on French law, with the breadth to identify and manage issues across commercial, employment, corporate and operational matters.

• Have relevant in-house and/or law firm, government or institutional legal experience, including work on regulatory engagement, policy development or enforcement matters.

• Have experience interpreting complex legislation and policy proposals, developing clear legal recommendations, and preparing persuasive submissions, consultation responses or briefing materials.

• Can combine regulatory judgment with practical country-level legal support, working across specialist teams and helping the business move from legal analysis to decisions and implementation.

• Exercise sound judgment in unfamiliar areas, distinguish material risks from issues that can be managed within established guidance, and know when to involve specialist colleagues.

• Communicate and negotiate effectively in French and English, and can explain complex legal issues clearly to business stakeholders and senior leaders.

• Can manage a varied workload, prioritise according to business needs and legal risk, and maintain dependable coverage of French operational and business matters while progressing other assigned work.

• Are interested in AI and emerging technologies, comfortable working through uncertainty and able to develop expertise as products, markets and legal requirements evolve.

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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