Critical Facilities Lead, Compute Infrastructure

About the team

OpenAI, in close collaboration with our capital partners, is embarking on a journey to build the world’s most advanced AI infrastructure ecosystem. The Infrastructure team is central to this mission, setting the core strategy and implementing the vision. From site selection to deployment to operations, this team sits at the intersection of commercial, technical, and operational domains, interacting with experts and executives inside and outside of OpenAI.

We design and operate mission-critical facilities that support cutting-edge AI workloads at scale

About the role

We are seeking a Critical Facilities Lead to support the commissioning, deployment, and long-term operation of our next-generation AI data centers. This role bridges the interface between data center construction and hardware landing, ensuring seamless integration of mission-critical infrastructure with hardware deployment timelines. You will define and execute commissioning plans, support infrastructure bring-up, and take ownership of operations and maintenance for cutting-edge, large-scale, AI data centers.

You will collaborate closely with design, construction, and hardware teams to define repeatable processes for new data center builds and lead hands-on operations to uphold the performance and reliability of our deployed infrastructure

Key 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 planed and unplanned downtime and SLAs for critical facility components