Suggested rewrite: Led a cross-functional initiative that improved [business outcome] by [measurable result], demonstrating experience relevant to this role...
Critical Facilities Lead, Compute Infrastructure
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- Remote from
- USA
- Salary
- USD 199k–302k / yr
- Department
- DevOps & Infrastructure
- Employment
- Full Time
- Experience
- Senior
- Published
- Apply before
- 22 Nov 2026
- Listing views
- 15
- Application actions
- 0
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The role, at a glance.
OpenAI is hiring a senior critical-facilities leader to commission, deploy, and operate large-scale AI data center infrastructure. The role connects construction, facility design, hardware deployment, and long-term operations for mission-critical campuses. Responsibilities include defining commissioning and bring-up processes, overseeing operational readiness, maintaining reliability, and managing liquid-cooling infrastructure. The successful candidate will bring more than 10 years of data center or critical-infrastructure experience and will establish repeatable procedures for maintenance, downtime response, and SLAs.
Role DNA
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Pace & Pressure
5/5Autonomy Level
5/5Communication Load
5/5Salary analysis
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Core skills
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Sample interview questions
I would begin by aligning the plan with design intent, equipment submittals, hardware-load requirements, and operational acceptance criteria. I would define staged functional tests for electrical, mechanical, controls, CDU, and manifold systems; document dependencies and rollback procedures; and use formal sign-off gates before progressing to hardware bring-up and sustained-load testing.
I would establish a structured handover process covering as-built documentation, asset records, test results, vendor warranties, spare parts, monitoring configuration, SOPs, MOPs, and EOPs. I would also validate staff readiness through drills and ensure that owners, escalation paths, SLAs, and preventive-maintenance schedules are in place before operational acceptance.
Key considerations include coolant quality, leak detection, pressure and flow monitoring, CDU redundancy, manifold isolation, serviceability, alarm thresholds, and safe maintenance procedures. I would also ensure the cooling design and operating procedures are validated against hardware thermal requirements and failure scenarios.
I would first protect personnel and stabilize the affected systems using established emergency procedures. I would coordinate communications with hardware, facilities, and leadership teams, execute containment and recovery actions, document the timeline and impact, and lead a root-cause review that produces tracked corrective and preventive actions.
I would standardize core operating artifacts such as commissioning templates, readiness checklists, monitoring requirements, maintenance standards, escalation matrices, and incident playbooks. I would allow controlled site-specific adaptations while using operational metrics, audits, and post-incident learning to continuously improve the common baseline.
About this role.
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.
Qualifications
Have 10+ years of experience in large-scale data center facility operations, commissioning, or critical infrastructure engineering.
Are deeply familiar with liquid-cooled IT systems, including CDU and in-rack/in-row manifold design, bring-up, and servicing.
Enjoy defining and improving infrastructure processes at the intersection of construction, hardware, and operations.
Are comfortable owning infrastructure from deployment to long-term maintenance and failure recovery.
Have experience responding to field issues and managing reliability through well-defined operational processes.
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 Affirmative 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.
To notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant, please submit a report through this form. No response will be provided to inquiries unrelated to job posting compliance.
We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link.
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