Senior Data Center Infrastructure Architect (AI)

Location: San Francisco, United States

Salary: $257,000–$327,000 per year, plus equity, performance-related bonuses for eligible employees, and benefits.

Company

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company developing and deploying general-purpose artificial intelligence with a focus on ensuring that AI benefits humanity.

What you will do

• Define system-level architectures for high-density AI data centers across power, cooling, IT equipment, controls, and facility infrastructure.
• Develop digital twins, simulations, and computational models for changing workloads, environmental conditions, equipment configurations, and failure scenarios.
• Use design data, operational telemetry, and quantitative analysis to improve efficiency, capacity, reliability, water consumption, cost, and deployment schedules.
• Translate evolving AI hardware requirements into facility, rack, power, and thermal architectures, and establish reusable reference architectures, modeling standards, and validation methods.
• Partner with software, hardware, controls, mechanical, electrical, construction, commissioning, operations, customer, and delivery teams to connect models with real infrastructure.
• Lead technical design reviews, support pilots and commissioning, validate performance, and shape the technical roadmap for physical-infrastructure products and engineering services.

Requirements

• 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.
• Strong understanding of PUE, WUE, utilization, capacity, reliability, and total cost of ownership metrics.
• Experience working with operational telemetry and translating real-world system behavior into design improvements.
• Ability to evaluate tradeoffs involving performance, reliability, cost, schedule, scalability, sustainability, and maintainability.
• Demonstrated ability to lead technical work in ambiguous, rapidly changing environments and communicate complex engineering decisions to customers, executives, and cross-functional teams.
• Bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, systems engineering, applied physics, or a related technical discipline.

Nice to have

• Experience with high-density GPU clusters and direct-to-chip liquid cooling.
• Experience connecting facility models with workload, rack, server, or chip-level power and thermal behavior.
• Familiarity with Modelica, MATLAB/Simulink, Python, EnergyPlus, computational fluid dynamics tools, or equivalent platforms.
• Experience with BMS, EPMS, DCIM, SCADA, PLCs, data historians, or industrial controls.
• Experience developing reference designs or new infrastructure architectures within a hyperscaler, data center operator, advanced engineering organization, or major design consultancy.
• Experience taking infrastructure concepts from modeling and prototype validation through deployment and operational feedback.
• Advanced degree in an engineering or scientific discipline.

Culture & Benefits

• Full-time employment in an at-will role based in the San Francisco office.
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance, with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts and access to FSA programs.
• 401(k) retirement plan with employer match, paid parental and caregiver leave, paid time off, paid holidays, sick or safe time, and mental health support.
• Annual learning and development stipend, daily office meals, eligible meal delivery credits, and relocation support for eligible employees.
• Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage, charitable donation matching, and wellness stipends may also be provided.

Hiring process

• Additional benefits details are provided during the hiring process.
• Background checks are administered in accordance with applicable law.