About the Team:

OpenAI, in close collaboration with our capital partners, is embarking on a journey to build the world’s most advanced AI infrastructure ecosystem. The Infra team is central to this mission, setting the core infra strategy and implementing this vision. From site selection to the buildout process, this team sits at the intersection of commercial, technical, strategy, and operations, interacting with teams and executives inside and outside of OpenAI. 

About the Role: 
OpenAI is looking for a driven and ambitious Equipment Strategy Lead to take on one of our most groundbreaking initiatives: building the world’s premier supercomputer. This role involves navigating complex global challenges with thousands of stakeholders and shaping strategies that will define the future of industries. If you thrive in high-impact environments and are eager to make a lasting difference, we’d love to hear from you.

This role will focus on equipment strategy, an interdisciplinary field that taps into engineering, infrastructure site design, supplier management, and much more. The ideal candidate will have worked in data center equipment strategy, engineering, or sourcing and have keen understanding of how engineering requirements are set and coordinated with the opportunities in the industrial base.   

This role offers an opportunity to shape and lead a global equipment strategy spanning the entire data center supply chain: from cooling to power to fiber and beyond. 

In this role you will:

• Develop and lead OpenAIs supercomputer equipment strategy

• Ensure equipment requirements match the needs of the engineering teams, coordinating inputs across compute-, network-, and other technical experts

• Partner and coordinate with internal stakeholders regularly to ensure that requirements and product roadmaps are aligned

• Lead engagements with external vendors, helping to drive informed equipment strategy decisions across OpenAI’s data center supply chain

• Help to drive well informed business decisions, including technical, performance, availability, and commercial dimensions

• Identify and de-risk equipment readiness challenges, both from a technical and from a commercial perspective 

• Develop strong external vendor, engineering, and supplier relationships

Qualifications:

• 10+ years of experience in program management for engineering equipment 

• Experience with data center equipment for hyperscalers 

• Comfort in managing cross-functional and cross-company teams; experience driving major decisions with executive leadership

• Experience managing technical and commercial tradeoffs in high expense environments

• Experience interfacing and leading external vendors including: engineering firms, equipment suppliers, and/or construction firms

• Experience with equipment performance, quality, and acceptance standards

• Experience in leading executive-level communications and readouts 

• An excitement to learn and lead on a world-class capital project

Preferred Skills:

• Experience in global, matrixed organizations and vendor negotiations

• Bachelor’s degree in engineering, architecture, or related fields

• Experience with deal negotiations 

• Experience with data center equipment technical standards across mechanical, electrical, and connectivity equipment 

• Familiarity with sustainability and energy/power fundamentals

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 do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability or any other legally protected status. 

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For US Based Candidates: Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link.

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At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.