Compute Infrastructure, Critical Facilities Manager

OpenAI; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

OpenAI is seeking a Critical Facilities Manager to lead day-to-day operations of its AI data center campuses in Seattle. You will own operating procedures, maintenance programs, and incident response for electrical, mechanical, and controls systems, ensuring reliability at scale.

In this role you will partner with commissioning, hardware deployment, and operations teams to bring new campuses online and maintain them at the highest standards, while leading vendors, contractors, and site staff

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience operating mission-critical facilities, data centers, or large-scale technical operations.
• Experience with electrical distribution, generators, UPS systems, cooling, and building controls.
• Experience leading operations teams, contractors, and vendors.
• Strong incident response and decision-making in high-pressure environments.
• Ability to develop maintenance strategies and operating procedures.

Responsibilities

• Lead day-to-day operational facilities infrastructure across AI compute campuses.
• Own readiness activities for new campus deployments and infrastructure expansion.
• Coordinate transitions from construction to steady-state operations with commissioning teams.
• Develop and improve operating procedures, maintenance programs, and response plans.
• Lead incident response and coordinate recovery during critical events.
• Manage vendors, contractors, and service providers.
• Collaborate with hardware deployment, networking, and engineering teams on changes.
• Monitor performance, risk, and capacity of critical systems.
• Support staffing, training, and development of facilities operations personnel.
• Ensure compliance with safety and environmental standards.

Skills

Electrical distribution

Generators & UPS

Cooling systems

Building controls

Incident response

Vendor management

Cross-functional leadership

Communication

Job description

About the Team

OpenAI is helping build the infrastructure that powers the next generation of artificial intelligence. Through Stargate, we are developing and operating large-scale AI compute campuses that require world-class execution across data center design, construction, commissioning, and operations.

The Infrastructure Operations team is responsible for bringing AI infrastructure online and ensuring it operates reliably at scale. We partner closely with hardware, network, deployment, construction, and operations teams to deliver mission-critical environments capable of supporting frontier AI workloads. As our footprint expands, operational excellence becomes increasingly important to ensuring safe, reliable, and efficient campus operations.

About the Role

We are seeking a Critical Facilities Manager to support the commissioning, operational readiness, and long-term operation of next-generation AI data center campuses.

This role sits at the intersection of construction, commissioning, hardware deployment, and facilities operations. You will be responsible for ensuring mission-critical infrastructure is prepared to support hardware deployment, transitioned successfully into production operations, and maintained to the highest standards of reliability and availability.

You will lead day-to-day operational execution across electrical, mechanical, controls, and supporting infrastructure systems while partnering closely with commissioning teams, site operators, vendors, and engineering organizations. This role requires a strong blend of technical depth, operational leadership, and cross-functional execution.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead day-to-day operations of mission-critical facility infrastructure across AI compute campuses.


• Own operational readiness activities supporting new campus deployments and infrastructure expansion.


• Partner with commissioning teams to transition facilities from construction and startup into steady-state operations.


• Develop, implement, and continuously improve operating procedures, maintenance programs, and response plans.


• Lead infrastructure incident response efforts and coordinate recovery activities during critical events.


• Drive root cause analysis investigations and corrective action programs to improve reliability and operational performance.


• Manage vendors, contractors, and service providers supporting facility operations.


• Partner with hardware deployment, networking, and engineering teams to coordinate infrastructure changes and maintenance activities.


• Monitor facility performance, operational risk, and capacity utilization across critical systems.


• Support staffing, training, and development of facilities operations personnel.


• Ensure compliance with safety, environmental, and operational standards.


• Establish operational processes that scale alongside OpenAI's rapidly growing infrastructure footprint. (OpenAI)

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience operating mission-critical facilities, data centers, industrial infrastructure, or large-scale technical operations environments.


• Possess strong knowledge of electrical distribution systems, generators, UPS systems, cooling systems, and building controls.


• Have experience supporting commissioning, operational readiness, or infrastructure turnover programs.


• Have led facility operations teams, contractors, and third-party vendors.


• Are comfortable responding to incidents and making decisions in high-pressure operational environments.


• Have experience developing maintenance strategies, operating procedures, and reliability programs.


• Enjoy operating in fast-paced environments with significant ambiguity and rapid growth.


• Communicate effectively across technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Preferred Skills

• Experience supporting hyperscale, cloud, AI, HPC, or mission-critical data center environments.


• Experience with liquid cooling systems and high-density compute deployments.


• Familiarity with reliability engineering methodologies, root cause analysis, and preventative maintenance programs.


• Experience supporting large-scale infrastructure deployment programs.


• Experience working across construction, commissioning, engineering, and operations organizations.


• Experience scaling operational processes across multiple campuses or geographic regions.

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 Affine 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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