Manufacturing Test Engineer, AI Compute Infrastructure

OpenAI

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Research Services 👥 201 employees 📍 San Francisco, CA, US Est. 2015

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with…

Job Overview

OpenAI’s Stargate organization is building the physical infrastructure required to power frontier AI systems at massive scale. The team operates across the full lifecycle of infrastructure development and operations — from hardware, manufacturing, and partner readiness through deployment, bring-up, and sustained production operations. That end-to-end ownership model is a core part of how Stargate is being built.

This is not a traditional, heavily layered hardware organization. Stargate is intentionally staying lean and is optimizing for hands-on operators who can work across design, manufacturing, and deployment boundaries, influence partners quickly, and prevent operational issues before they become system-level failures.

About the Role

As a Manufacturing Test Engineer on Stargate, you will own the development of manufacturing test strategies, tools, and execution practices for critical AI infrastructure hardware. You will work at the intersection of hardware engineering, manufacturing partners, infrastructure systems, and deployment teams to ensure that hardware shipped into OpenAI environments is testable, reliable, and production-ready at scale.

In this role, you will translate product and system requirements into manufacturing test coverage, drive the design of test stations and automation, and partner closely with suppliers and contract manufacturers to identify, root-cause, and eliminate yield issues and field escapes. This role is especially important in an environment where OpenAI depends on external partners and needs technical operators who can independently verify quality, challenge assumptions, and enforce repeatable, controlled execution.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and deploy manufacturing test solutions in collaboration with OpenAI’s global manufacturing partners.


• Define test requirements with NPI, hardware, and systems teams; drive Design for Test (DFT) to ensure testability and manufacturability.


• Maintain stable test operations for sustaining products, including deployment of software, firmware, and hardware updates to manufacturing test systems.


• Build and maintain automated test scripts to support functional testing, diagnostics, and new feature validation.


• Lead initiatives to improve test coverage, reduce test time, and lower manufacturing cost while maintaining product quality.


• Identify, analyze, and resolve manufacturing yield issues and field escapes; drive root cause and corrective actions to closure.


• Design, validate, and deploy test stations, fixtures, and tooling required for scalable production testing.


• Partner with NPI, manufacturing and supplier teams to ensure consistent and reliable test execution across sites.


• Develop and maintain documentation for test processes, procedures, and system configurations to ensure standardized practices.

Qualifications

Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or equivalent practical experience.

5+ years of experience in hardware engineering or manufacturing test engineering.

Experience developing and integrating manufacturing test systems using custom electronics, fixturing, and instrumentation.

Experience managing test systems and processes to improve manufacturability and production quality.

Preferred Qualifications

Experience testing server, networking, or data center hardware, including board and system-level functional testing in manufacturing.

Experience with Python or Shell scripting, and familiarity with Linux-based environments.

Knowledge of test station bring-up and validation methodologies (e.g., gage R&R, correlation, calibration).

Ability to develop comprehensive test plans based on product specifications and execute structured test procedures.

Experience troubleshooting complex manufacturing and system-level issues in collaboration with cross-functional teams.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artifi