Data Center Infrastructure Architect

📋 Job Overview

OpenAI’s Industrial Compute team is building and productizing infrastructure capabilities that help organizations deploy and operate advanced AI systems at scale. The team works across AI hardware, systems engineering, physical infrastructure, and customer delivery to turn emerging technologies into reliable, repeatable infrastructure solutions. Our work sits at the intersection of technical strategy, product development, engineering, and deployment. We partner closely with customers and internal engineering teams to solve complex infrastructure challenges spanning compute, power, cooling, controls, and facility efficiency.

🏢 About OpenAI

OpenAI is an artificial intelligence research laboratory whose goal is to develop artificial intelligence safely and beneficently. OpenAI pursues artificial general intelligence (AGI)—intelligent machines matching or exceeding human intelligence—with the goal of increasing cumulative knowledge and human happiness.

🎯 The Role

We are seeking a senior, hands-on Data Center Infrastructure Architect to develop and optimize the physical infrastructure required for large-scale AI deployments. This is a broad technical role spanning data center architecture, electrical and mechanical systems, high-density compute, controls, telemetry, and digital modeling. You will use simulation, operational data, and digital-twin approaches to evaluate infrastructure designs, identify system-level constraints, and improve efficiency, reliability, cost, and speed of deployment. The ideal candidate can move fluidly between first-principles analysis, facility and equipment design, computational modeling, engineering review, and real-world implementation. You should be comfortable working across disciplines rather than operating solely within electrical, mechanical, or software boundaries.

✅ Key Responsibilities

• Define system-level architectures for high-density AI data centers across power, cooling, IT equipment, controls, and facility infrastructure.
• Develop digital twins and other computational models that represent the behavior of data center systems under changing workloads, environmental conditions, equipment configurations, and failure scenarios.
• Use design and operational data to identify constraints, improve PUE and related efficiency metrics, and optimize capacity, reliability, water consumption, cost, and deployment schedules.
• Evaluate tradeoffs across electrical topology, cooling architecture, rack density, redundancy, controls, maintainability, constructability, and operational complexity.
• Translate evolving AI hardware requirements into practical facility, rack, power, and thermal architectures.
• Establish reference architectures, modeling standards, design assumptions, performance requirements, and validation methodologies that can be reused across customer deployments.
• Partner with software, data, controls, hardware, mechanical, electrical, construction, commissioning, and operations teams to connect digital models with real infrastructure behavior.
• Integrate telemetry from systems such as BMS, EPMS, DCIM, SCADA, equipment controllers, and IT hardware into modeling and optimization workflows.
• Lead technical reviews of customer and partner designs, identify material risks, and recommend changes grounded in quantitative analysis.
• Work with customers and delivery teams to adapt reference solutions to site-specific constraints while preserving performance, reliability, and efficiency objectives.
• Support pilots, commissioning, performance testing, and post-deployment analysis to validate models and continuously improve infrastructure designs.
• Help shape the technical roadmap for Industrial Compute’s physical-infrastructure products and engineering services.

📌 Required Qualifications

• Significant experience designing or optimizing hyperscale data centers, large mission-critical facilities, or comparable infrastructure systems.
• Broad knowledge of data center electrical and mechanical systems, including power distribution, backup power, thermal management, liquid cooling, heat rejection, controls, and monitoring.
• Experience making system-level design decisions across multiple engineering disciplines.
• Experience developing or applying simulation, optimization, digital-twin, or physics-based modeling techniques to physical infrastructure.

🎁 Benefits

Compensation: $360K – $530K • Offers Equity
The base pay offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factors, including market location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. If the role is non-exempt, overtime pay will be provided consistent with applicable laws. In addition to the salary range listed above, total compensation also includes generous equity, performance-related bonus(es) for eligible employees, and the following benefits:

Medical, dental, and vision insurance for you and your family, with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts
Pre-tax accounts for Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and commuter expenses (parking and transit)
401(k) retirement plan with employer match
Paid parental leave (up to 24 weeks for birth parents and 20 weeks for non-birthing parents), plus paid medical and caregiver leave (up to 8 weeks)
Paid time off: flexible PTO for exempt employees and up to 15 days annually for non-exempt employees
13+ paid company holidays, and multiple paid coordinated company office closures throughout the year for focus and recharge, plus paid sick or safe time (1 hour per 30 hours worked, or more, as required by applicable state or local law)
Mental health and wellness support
Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage
Annual learning and development stipend to fuel your professional growth
Daily meals in our offices, and meal delivery credits as eligible
Relocation support for eligible employees
Additional taxable fringe benefits, such as charitable donation matching and wellness stipends, may also be provided.
More details about our benefits are available to candidates during the hiring process.

This role is at-will and OpenAI reserves the right to modify base pay and other compensation components at any time based on individual performance, team or company results, or market conditions.

🛂 Visa & Eligibility

Relocation support for eligible employees is provided.