Technical Program Manager, Robotics

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

Job summary

OpenAI in San Francisco seeks a Technical Program Manager, Robotics Facilities to be the robotics point-of-contact for cross-functional partners. Coordinate with design/build teams and ensure alignment with facility constraints to support robotics infrastructure projects.

You will consolidate requirements, coordinate inputs, manage dependencies, and drive decisions through planning, design, construction, commissioning, and handover.

Qualifications

• Have experience leading technical programs involving hardware and physical infrastructure, ideally in robotics, laboratories, advanced manufacturing, or similarly complex environments.

Responsibilities

• Consolidate requirements, priorities, and decisions across Robotics research, engineering, and operations teams, providing the Real-Estate Workplace counterpart with a clear and coordinated view of Robotics needs.
• Translate Robotics workflows and equipment needs into documented requirements for floor layouts, utilities, network connectivity, environmental conditions, material flow, physical access, and operational support, working with technical owners to define acceptance criteria.
• Coordinate Robotics design reviews, ensuring technical owners assess proposals, resolve open questions, and confirm that agreed requirements are reflected in project documents.
• Track Robotics deliverables and dependencies against project milestones, surface risks and changes early, and secure decisions needed to keep work moving.
• Coordinate with Legal, Finance, Security, IT, Environmental Health & Safety, and other specialists to resolve issues affecting Robotics requirements and readiness.
• Coordinate Robotics readiness for equipment installation, moves, commissioning, and operational handover, with clear ownership and follow-through.
• Identify facility constraints that slow experimentation or operations, and use feedback from Robotics teams to improve requirements and handover practices for future projects.

Skills

Hardware & infra programs

Cross-functional collaboration

Job description

About the Team

Our Robotics team is focused on unlocking general-purpose robotics and pushing towards AGI-level intelligence in dynamic, real-world settings. Working across the entire model stack, we integrate cutting-edge hardware and software to explore a broad range of robotic form factors. We strive to seamlessly blend high-level AI capabilities with the physical constraints of physical systems.

About the Role

As a Technical Program Manager, Robotics Facilities, you will serve as the Robotics point-of-contact for cross-functional partners supporting the design and construction of Robotics sites. You will consolidate requirements, priorities, and decisions across Robotics disciplines and route those inputs through your counterpart, who manages design and construction partners and coordinates their workstreams.

You will clarify requirements, coordinate technical and operational inputs, manage dependencies and changes, and drive timely decisions through planning, design, construction, commissioning, and handover. This role calls for sound program judgment as research and operational needs evolve.

This role is based in San Francisco, CA and requires in-person presence 4 days a week.

In this role, you will:

• Consolidate requirements, priorities, and decisions across Robotics research, engineering, and operations teams, providing the Real-Estate Workplace counterpart with a clear and coordinated view of Robotics needs.
• Translate Robotics workflows and equipment needs into documented requirements for floor layouts, utilities, network connectivity, environmental conditions, material flow, physical access, and operational support, working with technical owners to define acceptance criteria.
• Coordinate Robotics design reviews, ensuring technical owners assess proposals, resolve open questions, and confirm that agreed requirements are reflected in project documents.
• Track Robotics deliverables and dependencies against project milestones, surface risks and changes early, and secure decisions needed to keep work moving.
• Coordinate with Legal, Finance, Security, IT, Environmental Health & Safety, and other specialists to resolve issues affecting Robotics requirements and readiness.
• Coordinate Robotics readiness for equipment installation, moves, commissioning, and operational handover, with clear ownership and follow-through.
• Identify facility constraints that slow experimentation or operations, and use feedback from Robotics teams to improve requirements and handover practices for future projects.

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Have experience leading technical programs involving hardware and physical infrastructure, ideally in robotics, laboratories, advanced manufacturing, or similarly complex environments.
• Can reconcile competing priorities across technical and operational teams and translate evolving needs into clear requirements and acceptance criteria.
• Can read drawings and technical documentation, ask useful questions about building systems and equipment interfaces, and involve specialists at the right time.
• Bring disciplined program management across requirements, schedules, dependencies, risks, decisions, and change management.
• Build strong working relationships across research, engineering, operations, and facilities partners, and communicate technical tradeoffs clearly to secure alignment.
• Are comfortable moving between technical detail and broader program priorities across multiple concurrent efforts, focusing teams on decisions and dependencies that affect progress.

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.

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