Remote Data Center Operations & Commissioning Lead

OpenAI; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 159,000 - 285,000; Full time

Job summary

OpenAI is seeking a Facilities Operations Lead to oversee the commissioning, deployment, and long-term operation of our next-generation AI data centers across San Francisco, Seattle, and remote US sites.

You will define commissioning plans, coordinate with design, construction, and hardware teams to ensure seamless integration of mission-critical infrastructure with deployment timelines, and own operations and maintenance for cutting-edge facilities.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in large-scale data center facility operations or related.
• Deep familiarity with liquid-cooled IT systems and CDU/in-rack design.
• Experience defining and improving infrastructure processes at construction–hardware–ops intersection.
• Ownership of infrastructure from deployment to long-term maintenance and failure recovery.
• Experience responding to field issues and maintaining reliability with defined processes.

Responsibilities

• Define and execute sequences of operations, commissioning steps, and bring-up processes for mission-critical data center facilities.
• Interface with the design and hardware teams to define deployment procedures tailored to each data center and hardware configuration.
• Oversee installation, commissioning, and operational readiness of large-scale data center campuses.
• Manage monitoring, maintenance, and quality control of the data center infrastructure, including high-performance liquid cooling systems.
• Develop on-site operations staffing strategy.
• Develop and enforce procedures for planned and unplanned downtime and SLAs for critical facility components.

Skills

Data center operations

Infrastructure process improvement

Reliability engineering

Field issue response

Operations leadership

Job description

OpenAI is seeking a Facilities Operations Lead to oversee the commissioning, deployment, and long-term operation of our next-generation AI data centers across San Francisco, Seattle, and remote US sites.

You will define commissioning plans, coordinate with design, construction, and hardware teams to ensure seamless integration of mission-critical infrastructure with deployment timelines, and own operations and maintenance for cutting-edge facilities.