Hardware Operations & Fleet Reliability Engineer

OpenAI; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

OpenAI seeks a Hardware Operations Engineer to serve as the technical authority for hardware reliability and fleet health at a flagship AI campus. You will operate at the intersection of hardware operations, sustaining engineering, and fleet reliability, partnering with CSPs, fleet-health engineers, hardware teams, and OEMs to diagnose and resolve production hardware issues.

The role drives RCA investigations, reliability improvement initiatives, lifecycle programs, and operational readiness,

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience supporting large-scale datacenter hardware infrastructure, with senior technician, sustaining engineering, or leadership exposure.
• Deep expertise with server platforms, GPU systems, storage, rack integration, and datacenter hardware architecture.
• Strong experience diagnosing complex hardware failures and leading repairs in production environments.
• Experience conducting root cause analysis and driving long-term corrective actions.
• Strong understanding of hardware reliability engineering principles and fleet-health management.
• Proven ability to partner across engineering, operations, manufacturing, and vendor organizations.
• Comfortable operating independently in high-priority production environments with significant operational responsibility.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with the ability to influence technical and operational decisions.
• Experience developing operational processes, maintenance standards, and technical documentation.

Responsibilities

• Drive technical triage and resolution of complex hardware failures impacting production systems.
• Partner with Fleet Health Engineering to investigate recurring hardware issues, identify failure patterns, and improve fleet reliability.
• Lead root cause analysis (RCA) efforts for critical hardware incidents and develop corrective and preventive action plans.
• Collaborate with Cloud Service Provider operations teams and OEM vendors to coordinate repairs, replacements, upgrades, and hardware lifecycle activities.
• Establish and continuously improve hardware maintenance procedures, operational runbooks, and troubleshooting standards.
• Analyze hardware failure trends and operational metrics to identify reliability risks and improvement opportunities.
• Support new hardware introductions, validation activities, and production readiness reviews.
• Coordinate spare parts strategy and inventory planning with supply chain and site teams.
• Partner with Hardware Engineering, Manufacturing, and Infrastructure teams to provide field feedback that improves future platform designs.
• Develop scalable operational standards and best practices that can be deployed across future Stargate campuses.
• Mentor on-site technicians and partner teams on advanced troubleshooting methodologies and hardware operational excellence.

Skills

Datacenter hardware

GPU systems

Troubleshooting

Root cause analysis

Cross-functional leadership

Hardware reliability

Tools

FRACAS

RCCA

5-Why

Fishbone

FMEA

Telemetry platforms

Hardware monitoring tools

Job description

OpenAI seeks a Hardware Operations Engineer to serve as the technical authority for hardware reliability and fleet health at a flagship AI campus. You will operate at the intersection of hardware operations, sustaining engineering, and fleet reliability, partnering with CSPs, fleet-health engineers, hardware teams, and OEMs to diagnose and resolve production hardware issues.

The role drives RCA investigations, reliability improvement initiatives, lifecycle programs, and operational readiness,