Strategic Sourcing Manager (AI Data Center Infrastructure)

Location: San Francisco, United States

Salary: $226K–$285K annually plus equity.

Company

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company building products and infrastructure intended to ensure that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits humanity.

What you will do

• Develop sourcing strategies for critical electrical and mechanical infrastructure systems across Industrial Compute campuses.
• Lead supplier selection, RFx processes, negotiations, and contract execution for major infrastructure programs.
• Build strategic relationships with manufacturers, EPC firms, integrators, and infrastructure suppliers.
• Align commercial decisions with engineering requirements, project schedules, deployment priorities, and long-term capacity plans.
• Evaluate supplier capacity, quality, financial health, delivery performance, operational maturity, and market conditions.
• Mitigate supply risks through diversification, capacity reservations, long-term agreements, alternative sourcing, scorecards, financial models, and sourcing governance.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Supply Chain, Engineering, Construction Management, Business, Finance, Operations, or a related field.
• 8+ years of experience in strategic sourcing, procurement, supplier management, or infrastructure supply chain.
• Experience sourcing major infrastructure systems, industrial equipment, or equipment for large capital projects.
• Demonstrated success negotiating complex commercial agreements with strategic suppliers.
• Strong understanding of supplier qualification, contract strategy, performance management, and sourcing governance.
• Experience partnering with engineering, construction, finance, legal, and operations teams.
• Strong analytical, financial modeling, negotiation, and executive communication skills.
• Deep sourcing experience in electrical or mechanical infrastructure, with sufficient cross-functional fluency to work across the other discipline.

Nice to have

• Experience sourcing electrical categories such as substations, transformers, medium- and low-voltage distribution, switchgear, busway, UPS, protection and control systems, or prefabricated electrical skids and e-houses.
• Experience sourcing mechanical categories such as modular cooling plants, chillers, heat exchangers, pumps, VFDs, air- or water-cooled systems, coolers, CRAH/CRAC units, air-handling equipment, piping, and valves.
• Experience with modular data center infrastructure, fabricated enclosure systems, hyperscale cloud, AI infrastructure, semiconductor, energy, or advanced manufacturing programs.
• Experience with long-lead equipment planning, supplier capacity management, global supplier networks across North America, Europe, and Asia, or EPC, design-build, and integrated project delivery environments.

Culture & Benefits

• Work with engineering firms, construction partners, utilities, equipment manufacturers, strategic suppliers, and cross-functional teams to deliver hyperscale campuses.
• Collaborate across Design Engineering, Infrastructure Delivery, Capacity Planning, Construction, Finance, Legal, and Hardware Operations.
• Equity is included in the compensation package.
• OpenAI is an equal opportunity employer committed to reasonable accommodations and considers qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records in accordance with applicable law.