Field Service Engineer

OpenAI, Inc.; United States; Remote; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

OpenAI, Inc. is seeking a senior field service engineer to design and operate electrical and mechanical infrastructure across our data center portfolio.

This field‑oriented role focuses on power, cooling, and controls, not traditional facilities operations, and requires deep system knowledge and hands-on troubleshooting across disciplines. You will build the operating model, set standards, coordinate vendors, and drive issues from design to verified resolution.

Qualifications

• 8+ years hands-on experience supporting critical electrical, mechanical, or electromechanical infrastructure.
• Ability to troubleshoot across electromechanical and controls boundaries.
• Experience leading field engineering or technician teams.
• Reading one-line diagrams, schematics, P&IDs, and commissioning records.
• Strong safety and change-control practices.
• Willingness to travel up to 50%.

Responsibilities

• Lead field support for startup, commissioning, troubleshooting, repair, and reliability improvement across critical data center infrastructure.
• Serve as senior technical owner for transformers, switchgear, UPS, generators, PDUs, protection and controls, chillers, cooling towers, pumps, CDUs, CRAH units, and related control systems.
• Diagnose complex failures across power, cooling, controls, and hardware interfaces; drive corrective actions through validation.
• Build the field service operating model, including staffing, coverage, escalation paths, response expectations, spare-parts strategy, documentation, and performance metrics.
• Mentor other field service engineers and technicians, promoting safety, technical rigor, accountability, and continuous learning.
• Partner with design, construction, commissioning, site operations, and hardware teams to improve maintainability and lifecycle reliability.

Skills

Electrical/Mechanical troubleshooting

Field leadership / team development

Reading diagrams & control drawings

Education

Bachelor's degree in engineering

Job description

About the Team

OpenAI's infrastructure teams design, build, activate, and operate the critical systems that support large-scale AI compute. Field Service Engineering partners across design, construction, commissioning, site operations, hardware operations, and equipment providers to turn complex infrastructure into safe, reliable, and serviceable systems.

About the Role

We are seeking a senior, field service engineer to build the technical operating model responsible for critical electrical and mechanical infrastructure across our data center portfolio. This is a field-oriented electrical & mechanical engineering role, not a traditional facilities operations position. You will combine deep systems understanding in data center power and cooling systems to aid in SOO, design, maintenance & operability, troubleshooting and other engineering related responsibility around key equipment. The role will include leveraging training and experience to establish standards, develop people, coordinate vendors, and drive issues from design, first principles, first signals through verified resolution. The strongest candidates will have deep expertise in either electrical and mechanical systems and strong working fluency across the other discipline (e.g. controls, business acumen).

Remote - travel 50%

Key Responsibilities

• Lead field support for startup, commissioning, troubleshooting, repair, and reliability improvement across critical data center infrastructure.

• Serve as the senior technical owner for transformers, switchgear, UPS systems, generators, PDUs, protection and controls, chillers, cooling towers, pumps, CDUs, CRAH units, and associated control systems.

• Diagnose complex failures across power, cooling, controls, and hardware interfaces; distinguish symptoms from root causes and drive corrective actions through validation.

• Build the field service operating model, including staffing recommendations, coverage, escalation paths, response expectations, spare-parts strategy, documentation, and performance metrics.

• Aid in hiring, development, and coaching other field service engineers and technicians while creating a culture of safety, technical rigor, accountability, and continuous learning.

• Partner with design, construction, commissioning, site operations, and hardware teams to improve maintainability, readiness, and lifecycle reliability.

• Manage OEM and service-provider relationships, technical escalations, repair plans, warranties, and sustained corrective action.

• Establish and improve safe work practices, including lockout/tagout, switching and maintenance procedures, MOPs, SOPs, EOPs, and incident response.

• Translate field learning into design feedback, preventive maintenance improvements, training, and reusable standards.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of hands-on experience supporting critical electrical, mechanical, or electromechanical infrastructure in data centers, industrial facilities, utilities, manufacturing, or similarly complex environments.

• Deep technical expertise in at least one discipline, electrical or mechanical, with demonstrated ability to troubleshoot across electromechanical and controls boundaries.

• Experience building, leading, or materially developing a field engineering, service, maintenance, or technician team.

• Demonstrated success leading high-severity troubleshooting, root-cause analysis, corrective action, and reliability improvement.

• Ability to read and use one-line diagrams, schematics, P&IDs, sequence-of-operations documents, control diagrams, equipment manuals, and commissioning records.

• Strong safety judgment and experience working under formal energization, isolation, maintenance, and change-control procedures.

• Clear written and verbal communication with engineers, technicians, vendors, construction teams, and senior stakeholders.

• Ability to travel up to 50% and support planned or urgent field activity when required.

• Bachelor's degree in engineering or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Skills

• Experience with hyperscale data centers, high-density compute infrastructure, or other mission-critical environments.

• Experience bringing new sites from construction and commissioning into steady-state operations.

• Working knowledge of BMS, EPMS, SCADA, PLC, or other infrastructure monitoring and controls platforms.

• Experience establishing service programs, readiness criteria, technical training, or fleet-wide reliability standards.

• Relevant electrical, mechanical, HVAC, controls, safety, or trade certifications.

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 Aff….

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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