Jordan was president of eBay’s lucrative PayPal division until his resignation in July 2006, and he was in charge of eBay’s North American operations from 2000 to 2004.

At OpenTable, he will replace CEO Thomas Layton, who has been in charge of the company for six years and spearheaded the search for a new leader. Layton, a self-described “serial entrepreneur” who prefers working at new startups, will remain on OpenTable’s board of directors.

Jordan is a high-profile Silicon Valley executive. After he took the helm of PayPal in December 2004, eBay’s electronic transaction division became the standard system for exchanging money on the Internet.

Although Jordan said last year he was resigning to spend more time with his family, critics said he fled eBay at the right time — just as the San Jose-based e-commerce powerhouse was coming under increasing pressure from Google Inc.’s new online payment service, Google Checkout.

The resignation of Jordan, who for years was presumed to be a successor to eBay CEO Meg Whitman, prompted an immediate dip in eBay’s stock.

Jordan, 48, said Tuesday he’s had numerous offers from other technology companies in his time off. But Jordan — who put himself through college as a chef and worked at a French restaurant in Philadelphia in his early 20s — said he couldn’t refuse an offer from San Francisco-based OpenTable.

The venture capital-backed company makes software called OpenTable System, which helps more than 7,000 restaurants keep electronic reservations. More than 40 million diners have booked reservations at OpenTable.com and through partner sites such as AOL CityGuide, Time Out New York and Web sites for newspapers in San Francisco, Chicago and Washington.

Jordan recently used OpenTable to book a reservation at the fancy Greek restaurant Evvia in Palo Alto. The site can sometimes allow people snag off-peak or last-minute reservations at even the hottest restaurants.

“This opportunity just reached out and grabbed me,” Jordan said.