Lead Datacenter Hardware Technician

OpenAI; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

OpenAI is seeking a Datacenter Hardware Technician Lead to serve as the senior on-site technical authority for hardware reliability and fleet health at one of our flagship AI campuses. You will drive root cause investigations, coordinate repairs with OEMs, and mentor on-site technicians, ensuring production systems remain robust as we scale.

The role demands deep hands-on datacenter hardware expertise, strong troubleshooting, and cross-functional leadership to standardize maintenance and

Qualifications

• 8+ years in large-scale datacenter hardware with senior technician or leadership experience.
• Deep expertise in servers, GPUs, storage, rack integration and hardware architecture.
• Experience diagnosing complex hardware failures and leading repairs in production.
• Proven RCA and long-term corrective actions experience.
• Strong fleet-health and reliability engineering knowledge.
• Ability to partner across engineering, operations, manufacturing and vendors.
• Willingness to travel occasionally to support new campuses.

Responsibilities

• Drive triage and resolution of complex hardware failures in production.
• Collaborate with Fleet Health Engineering to identify failure patterns and improve reliability.
• Lead RCA efforts and develop corrective action plans.
• Coordinate repairs, replacements, upgrades with CSPs and OEMs.
• Establish maintenance procedures and runbooks; improve troubleshooting standards.
• Analyze failure trends and operational metrics for reliability risks.
• Support new hardware introductions and production readiness reviews.
• Manage spare parts strategy with supply chain and sites.
• Mentor on-site technicians on advanced troubleshooting.
• Develop scalable operational standards for future campuses.

Skills

Datacenter hardware

GPU systems

Server platforms

Rack integration

Fleet health

Root cause analysis

Cross-functional leadership

Troubleshooting

Tools

FRACAS

RCCA

Linux

Hardware validation

Job description

OpenAI is seeking a Datacenter Hardware Technician Lead to serve as the senior on-site technical authority for hardware reliability and fleet health at one of our flagship AI campuses. You will drive root cause investigations, coordinate repairs with OEMs, and mentor on-site technicians, ensuring production systems remain robust as we scale.

The role demands deep hands-on datacenter hardware expertise, strong troubleshooting, and cross-functional leadership to standardize maintenance and