Technical Program Manager, Applied Infrastructure

Alfie; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 257,000 - 445,000; Full time

Job summary

OpenAI is seeking a Technical Program Manager for Applied Infrastructure in San Francisco. You will lead cross-cutting infrastructure programs, focusing on CPU planning, capacity modeling, and cost attribution to ensure scalable growth of OpenAI’s infrastructure footprint.

You will collaborate with Engineering, Product, and Finance, driving demand signals and capacity forecasts, while coordinating with cloud providers to manage delivery and costs.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience leading large-scale infrastructure programs.
• Experience with compute planning, orchestration, and resource management.
• Experience with hyperscalers or cloud providers.
• Strong cross-functional and communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the DRI for complex infrastructure programs spanning CPU planning, orchestration, and resource management domains.
• Build and operationalize systems to capture demand signals, model future capacity needs, and align planning across teams.
• Partner with Infrastructure, Product and Finance to forecast usage patterns and ensure supply/demand alignment.
• Lead cost attribution and quota enforcement programs to promote stability and equitable access.
• Drive standardization of tooling and processes across Applied and Infra organizations.
• Drive cross-functional programs to evolve infrastructure to support growth and scale.
• Interact with external vendors/partners to manage delivery schedules, capacity projections and cost growth.
• Communicate risks, progress, and key decisions to technical and executive stakeholders.

Skills

Compute resource planning

System scalability

Platform engineering

Cloud infrastructure

Cross-functional leadership

Tools

Azure

Job description

Technical Program Manager, Applied Infrastructure

San Francisco On-site Full-time Manager $257k – $445k/yr 3 weeks ago

About the role

Technical Program Manager – Applied Infrastructure

About the Team

The Applied team safely brings OpenAI’s technology to the world, powering products like ChatGPT, and the APIs for GPT and more. Behind these products is a complex and rapidly evolving infrastructure platform that enables scale, performance, and safety. The Applied Infrastructure TPM team partners across engineering to lead foundational programs that ensure OpenAI’s infrastructure can meet current and future demand.

About the RoleWe’re looking for a seasoned Technical Program Manager to drive critical infrastructure programs across the Applied organization. This TPM will focus on cross-cutting initiatives such as general compute capacity planning, process transformation, cost and quota attribution and optimization, and coordination across infrastructure and product stakeholders. There will also be focus on evolving OpenAI’s infrastructure to support growth, scale and new products. This work is core to how OpenAI manages and grows its infrastructure footprint in a disciplined, scalable way.

In this role, you will:

Serve as the DRI for complex infrastructure programs spanning CPU planning, orchestration, and other resource management domains (e.g. networking, storage).

Build and operationalize systems to capture demand signals, model future capacity needs, and align infrastructure planning across internal teams and partners external to the company.

Partner closely with Infrastructure, Product and Finance teams to forecast infrastructure usage patterns and ensure supply/demand alignment.

Lead cost attribution and quota enforcement programs to promote stability and ensure equitable access to resources across teams.

Drive simplification and standardization of infrastructure tooling and processes across Applied and Infra organizations.

Drive cross functional programs to evolve our infrastructure to support new growth and scale

Work with external vendors and partners (e.g., cloud providers) to manage delivery schedules, capacity projections, and cost growth.

Communicate project risks, progress, and key decisions clearly to technical and executive stakeholders.

You might thrive in this role if you:

Have 7+ years of experience leading large-scale, technical infrastructure programs, especially in compute resource planning, system scalability, or platform engineering.

Understand how cloud infrastructure, distributed systems, and foundational infra components (compute, storage, networking) come together to power complex products.

Have worked with hyperscalers or cloud providers (e.g. Azure) to manage infrastructure delivery and planning cycles.

Are structured and detail-oriented, with the ability to untangle complex dependencies and drive clarity across ambiguous problem spaces.

Excel at building durable processes, driving alignment across teams, and communicating clearly across technical and business audiences.

Can navigate complex and ambiguous problems at the intersection of infrastructure and business

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 Affiantive Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.

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.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link.

At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.