Senior Lead, Clean Energy & Emerging Tech Infra

OpenAI; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 228,000 - 285,000; Full time

Job summary

OpenAI in San Francisco seeks a Clean Energy and New Technology Lead to own infrastructure energy strategy and execution, identifying scalable, low‑carbon solutions for compute and data center growth. You will collaborate with regulatory and policy teams to align expansion with OpenAI's environmental objectives.

This individual contributor role translates options into actionable deployment paths, evaluates pilots, and partners across energy, engineering, legal, and finance to ensure reliability,

Qualifications

• 15+ years in energy technology, infrastructure sustainability, clean energy procurement, power markets, data center energy strategy, utility programs, or related roles.
• Strong understanding of power systems, low‑carbon energy, grid constraints, infrastructure reliability, and the practical requirements of large‑scale deployment.
• Experience evaluating emerging technologies, structuring pilots, or moving early‑stage solutions toward commercial implementation.
• Ability to balance sustainability objectives with reliability, cost, schedule, regulatory, and operational constraints.
• Proven cross‑functional leadership across technical, commercial, policy, and executive stakeholders.
• Excellent analytical, written communication, and executive‑summary skills.

Responsibilities

• Evaluate emerging energy solutions such as clean firm power, advanced storage, grid flexibility, low‑carbon backup power, heat reuse, water‑related energy efficiency, and other scalable technologies where relevant.
• Identify pilot opportunities and deployment pathways that can move promising energy technologies from concept to commercially and operationally credible execution.
• Translate technical options into clear reliability, cost, schedule, carbon, regulatory, and operational implications for infrastructure decision‑making.
• Partner with energy regulatory, policy, procurement, engineering, deployment, finance, legal, and site‑readiness teams to align technology and sustainability choices with project needs.
• Track external market, policy, utility, and technology developments.
• Build repeatable evaluation frameworks, partner criteria, and execution playbooks for sustainability and emerging energy technology initiatives.

Skills

Energy strategy

Cross-functional leadership

Executive communication

Analytical thinking

Job description

OpenAI in San Francisco seeks a Clean Energy and New Technology Lead to own infrastructure energy strategy and execution, identifying scalable, low‑carbon solutions for compute and data center growth. You will collaborate with regulatory and policy teams to align expansion with OpenAI's environmental objectives.

This individual contributor role translates options into actionable deployment paths, evaluates pilots, and partners across energy, engineering, legal, and finance to ensure reliability,