Oren Sanderson was born in Tel Aviv in 1950 to a mother who was a school teacher and a father who was a mechanical engineer. His parents met when his father was wounded as a heavy equipment semi-trailer driver in Her Majesty's Royal Engineers forces in the Western Desert of North Africa and was hospitalized in a military hospital in Beirut, where his mother served as a nurse.

Oren served in the Israel Defense Forces for eight years, initially in the Artillery Corps where he fought as a Battery Commander in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Later, he served as an intelligence analyst in the General Headquarters, achieving the rank of Major. After the historic visit of President Sadat of Egypt to Jerusalem in 1977, he decided to move to Government Service and joined the Foreign Ministry.