Strategic Sourcing Manager, Data Center Infrastructure, Electrical & Mechanical
OpenAI · San Francisco, CA · Cloud, IT and infrastructure · posted today
OpenAI · San Francisco, CA · posted 204 days ago
By AtiveSite · Published 07/11/2026 · Updated 09/11/2026 · Every figure is linked to its source below.
| Employer | OpenAI |
|---|---|
| Location | San Francisco, California |
| Field | Technology › Cloud, IT and infrastructure |
| Level | not stated |
| Source category | Scaling, Datacenter Design |
| Posted | 2026-04-19 (204 days ago) |
| Work arrangement | A remote or flexible location is listed |
| Pay | Not published in the source listing |
About the Team
OpenAI is building the infrastructure foundation for the next generation of AI. The Data Center Engineering team defines the strategy, reference architectures, technical requirements, and delivery standards for the large-scale data centers that support OpenAI research, products, and infrastructure partners.
As a Data Center Infrastructure Electrical Engineer, you will help define, validate, and scale the electrical power systems that support high-density AI compute. You will translate evolving compute requirements into practical facility and rack-power architectures, evaluate new technologies and vendor solutions, and drive technical decisions across design, manufacturing validation, construction, commissioning, deployment, and operations.
This role is best suited for a senior hands-on engineer with deep experience in mission-critical power systems, strong judgment under ambiguity, and the ability to connect facility infrastructure, hardware requirements, controls, telemetry, reliability, and operations.
About the Role
We are seeking a senior electrical infrastructure engineer to lead the development of reliable, scalable, and efficient power architectures for high-density, liquid-cooled AI data centers.
The ideal candidate has strong practical experience with critical electrical systems at data centers or comparable industrial scale, including medium-voltage and low-voltage distribution, utility interfaces, backup power, UPS and battery systems, rack power delivery, grounding, protection, controls, and monitoring systems.
You should be comfortable moving between long-range architecture, detailed engineering review, lab validation, vendor qualification, field deployment, and operational troubleshooting.
Key Responsibilities
Design and optimize electrical topologies and equipment strategies that reduce cost, accelerate schedules, improve efficiency, increase scalability, and maintain high reliability and maintainability.
Review and develop basis-of-design documents, single-line diagrams, equipment specifications, commissioning plans, and power system studies including load flow, short circuit, protection coordination, arc flash, and grid transient compliance.
Lead technical evaluation of equipment vendors, manufacturers, design consultants, commissioning agents, contractors, and test labs. Review submittals, schematics, certifications, quality records, and test reports.
Evaluate AC and DC power distribution options for high-density compute, including rectifier architectures, busway, rack power shelves, power supplies, cable management, redundancy strategies, serviceability, and fault isolation.
Partner with mechanical, cooling, controls, hardware, networking, construction, and operations teams to ensure electrical systems support liquid-cooled GPU rack deployments and reliable facility operation.
Drive FAT, SAT, witness testing, burn-in, reliability testing, interoperability testing, and integrated systems testing for critical infrastructure and rack deployments.
Help guide and operate an R&D program to validate new equipment, rack designs, telemetry, operating envelopes, failure scenarios, and facility-to-hardware interactions.
Define telemetry and controls requirements including metering, waveform capture, breaker and relay status, UPS and battery health, generator status, rack power, CDU status, coolant conditions, alarms, and control states.
Analyze lab data, operational incidents, power quality events, nuisance trips, thermal excursions, controls alarms, and rack-level failures to improve designs, procedures, vendor quality, and reliability models.
Create engineering standards, test procedures, commissioning scripts, operating procedures, decision records, risk registers, and concise executive summaries.
Provide senior technical escalation support during design reviews, construction, manufacturing validation, commissioning, energization, deployment, and operational events.
Raise the technical bar across partner teams in electrical design, safety, testing discipline, documentation quality, reliability, and operational rigors
Qualifications
10+ years of electrical engineering experience in mission-critical facilities such as data centers or comparable critical infrastructure.
Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, power systems, or a related discipline.
Strong hands-on experience with MV/LV distribution, transformers, switchgear, switchboards, generators, UPS systems, batteries, PDUs, RPPs, busway, PSUs, grounding, bonding, and protection systems.
Experience producing and reviewing electrical designs, studies, equipment specifications, commissioning plans, test procedures, and acceptance criteria.
Experience leading FWTs, FATs, SATs, integrated systems testing, failure-mode testing, and root-cause investigations.
Strong understanding of codes, standards, utility coordination, safety requirements, and AHJ processes.
Ability to evaluate conflicting technical tradeoffs involving reliability, cost, schedule, constructability, maintainability, and scalability.
Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to explain complex issues clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Comfortable operating in fast-moving environments with incomplete information and changing priorities.
Preferred Skills
15+ years of relevant experience.
Advanced degree in electrical engineering, power systems, or a related discipline.
Professional Engineer license, Chartered Engineer status, or comparable professional certification.
Direct experience with hyperscale data centers, GPU clusters, high-density rack deployments, or liquid-cooled compute environments.
Experience qualifying new electrical products from prototype through certification, manufacturing ramp, deployment, and lifecycle support.
Experience with BMS, EPMS, DCIM, SCADA, PLCs, protective relays, waveform capture, data historians, or reliability analytics platforms.
Experience with modular power systems, rack-level conversion, BESS, HVDC/LVDC, or other advanced power architectures.
Experience managing global, multi-site deployment programs or manufacturing quality programs.
Familiarity with grid constraints, demand response, renewable integration, or low-carbon infrastructure strategies.
Work Environment and Travel
This role requires periodic travel to data center campuses, manufacturing partners, equipment suppliers, laboratories, construction sites, and commissioning activities.
The person in this role should be comfortable working in office, lab, manufacturing, construction, and operating data center environments, including environments that require PPE, safety briefings, lockout/tagout discipline, and coordination with site operations.
Work may include time-sensitive technical escalations during commissioning, energization, production deployment, vendor testing, or operational incidents.
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.
OpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy
At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.
Field: Technology Sub-niche: Cloud, IT and infrastructure All jobs at OpenAI Jobs in California Jobs in San Francisco, CA San Francisco city guide California state guide San Francisco County economy Pay for this occupation (BLS) All 252 open jobs for this occupation
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This is a — role in the Technology field (Cloud, IT and infrastructure) at OpenAI.
The closest occupation in the official wage statistics is Electrical engineers (a match by name, so treat it as an estimate). Nationally its median pay is $120,630 a year (BLS OEWS, May 2025), employment is projected to change by +9.9% between 2025 and 2035, and the typical entry route is: Bachelor's degree.
In the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA area the median for this occupation is $166,030 a year with 2,470 jobs (BLS OEWS, May 2025). This is a statistic for the occupation, not an offer from this employer.
Pay by state and metro area for this occupation →
Estimate for a wage earner: 2026 federal brackets and standard deduction (IRS), Social Security 6.2% up to $184,500, Medicare 1.45% (+0.9% above $200,000 single / $250,000 married), and a state rate you set; set your own state tax rate. It ignores credits, pre-tax deductions, local taxes and benefits. Sources: IRS: tax year 2026 inflation adjustments · SSA wage base per Federal Register notice 2025-19763.
This is editorial guidance, not information from the employer.
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The job is in San Francisco, CA. Below is what the official statistics say about living and working there.
How San Francisco compares. Among the 145 largest places in California, San Francisco is #4 by population, #139 for homeownership (#1 = highest), #20 for remote work (#1 = most), #25 for college degrees (#1 = most). Its county, San Francisco County, is #3 of 58 counties for average pay ($174,103).
San Francisco has 830,235 residents (ACS 2020–2024), about 2.1% of the population of California. It covers 47 square miles of land, which works out to roughly 17,784 people per square mile. The median age is 40.0, 6% older than the state median (40.0 against 37.9).
The median gross rent is $2,476 a month (rent plus utilities), 22% above the state median ($2,476 against $2,036). Over a year that is 21.1% of the median household income. US housing guidance treats housing as affordable when it takes 30% of income or less, so the typical household is under that line. The median home value is $1,394,500, which is 9.9 times the median household income ($140,970); a ratio above 5 usually means buying is out of reach without savings or a second income. 38.2% of households own their home, 32% below the state average (38.2% against 55.9%). A low ownership share points to a rental-heavy market with more apartments and shorter stays.
The San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA metropolitan area has 2,373,920 jobs in the BLS wage survey, and the median pay across all occupations is $74,260 a year, 46% above the national median ($74,260 against $50,980). The biggest occupation groups are office and administrative support (226,320 jobs, median $62,120); management (223,100 jobs, median $176,340); business and financial operations (207,030 jobs, median $112,960). The area is most specialised in computer and mathematical (1.9 times) and life, physical, and social science (1.8 times), where the share of workers is well above the national share. The best-paying groups with at least 5,000 jobs are management ($176,340) and computer and mathematical ($167,770). In 2026M09 the unemployment rate of San Francisco County was 4.0%. 69.6% of residents aged 16 and over are in the labour force. The city lies in San Francisco County; its jobs, pay by industry and GDP are on the county page.
Among workers, 28.6% drive alone, 18.7% use public transit, 9.3% walk, 31.0% work from home. 21.6% of workers commute 45 minutes or more, 11% above the state average (21.6% against 19.4%). Remote work is more common than in the state as a whole, which widens the set of employers a resident can work for without moving.
60.3% of adults aged 25 and over hold a bachelor's degree or higher, 63% above the state share (60.3% against 37.1%). 34.0% of residents were born outside the United States, 26% above the state share (34.0% against 27.0%). The poverty rate is 11.2%, 7% below the state rate (11.2% against 12.0%).
The warmest month is Sep, averaging 59°F (14.9°C), and the coolest is Apr at 53°F (11.6°C). About 515 mm (20 inches) of precipitation falls in a year; Dec is the wettest month (112 mm) and Jul the driest (2 mm). These values come from NASA satellite-based climatology on a grid of about 50 km, so they describe the wider area, not a weather station in the city.
Closest cities in this guide: Daly City (31 miles, rent 3% higher); Pacifica (31 miles, rent 25% higher); San Bruno (34 miles, rent 12% higher); Millbrae (36 miles, rent 32% higher). Rent differences are against San Francisco; use the Compare tab to put any two cities side by side.
Full guide to San Francisco →California guideAll jobs in San Francisco
These links go to official sources and open in a new window. The first one is the government's or company's own site as listed in Wikidata (property "official website"); check it before relying on it.
Places within 50 miles (straight line) of San Francisco, CA that have a guide, with what living there costs. The last-but-one column divides a year of rent by the median pay of the closest occupation ($166,030 a year), an estimate, not this employer's pay.
| Place ⇅ | Distance from the job city ⇅ | Median rent ⇅ | Median home value ⇅ | Median household income ⇅ | Commute 45+ min ⇅ | Rent as % of occupation pay ⇅ | Open jobs there ⇅ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| San Francisco, CA | 0 mi | $2,476 | $1,394,500 | $140,970 | 21.6% | 17.9% | Jobs |
| Daly City, CA | 31 mi | $2,551 | $1,115,000 | $123,547 | 19.6% | 18.4% | Jobs |
| Pacifica, CA | 31 mi | $3,098 | $1,249,800 | $160,523 | 15.5% | 22.4% | — |
| San Bruno, CA | 34 mi | $2,773 | $1,207,500 | $141,272 | 12.2% | 20.0% | — |
| Millbrae, CA | 36 mi | $3,272 | $1,934,900 | $163,476 | 21.8% | 23.6% | Jobs |
| Brisbane, CA | 36 mi | $2,574 | $1,232,200 | $156,169 | 29.8% | 18.6% | — |
| South San Francisco, CA | 36 mi | $2,802 | $1,188,800 | $136,578 | 15.2% | 20.3% | Jobs |
| Half Moon Bay, CA | 37 mi | $2,433 | $1,549,500 | $157,884 | 26.7% | 17.6% | — |
| Burlingame, CA | 38 mi | $2,785 | $2,000,001 | $174,000 | 23.1% | 20.1% | Jobs |
| Richmond, CA | 40 mi | $1,960 | $668,200 | $95,391 | 28.8% | 14.2% | — |
| San Mateo, CA | 41 mi | $3,077 | $1,618,700 | $153,504 | 15.8% | 22.2% | Jobs |
| Berkeley, CA | 41 mi | $2,133 | $1,413,900 | $108,092 | 20.8% | 15.4% | Jobs |
| Alameda, CA | 42 mi | $2,474 | $1,235,700 | $137,697 | 27.3% | 17.9% | Jobs |
| Belmont, CA | 43 mi | $2,875 | $2,000,001 | $205,297 | 18.6% | 20.8% | Jobs |
| Oakland, CA | 44 mi | $1,979 | $929,900 | $101,600 | 21.9% | 14.3% | Jobs |
| Foster City, CA | 44 mi | $3,501 | $1,838,200 | $199,143 | 20.6% | 25.3% | Jobs |
| San Carlos, CA | 45 mi | $2,854 | $2,000,001 | $237,470 | 14.9% | 20.6% | Jobs |
| Redwood City, CA | 47 mi | $2,968 | $1,801,700 | $157,814 | 10.2% | 21.5% | Jobs |
| San Leandro, CA | 48 mi | $2,186 | $844,200 | $101,420 | 23.7% | 15.8% | — |
| Atherton, CA | 49 mi | $3,501 | $2,000,001 | $250,001 | 7.0% | 25.3% | — |
Occupations close to Electrical engineers in the official classification, with pay, outlook and whether there are open jobs for them on this site right now.
| Occupation ⇅ | National median pay ⇅ | Growth 2025–35 ⇅ | Openings a year (US) ⇅ | Open jobs here ⇅ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Computer hardware engineers | $161,740 | +9.1% | 4,100 | none right now |
| Aerospace engineers | $134,960 | +8.3% | 3,800 | 6 open |
| Electronics engineers, except computer | $130,220 | +3.7% | 4,900 | none right now |
| Chemical engineers | $125,040 | +4.7% | 1,100 | 6 open |
| Civil engineers | $100,840 | +6.4% | 22,700 | 37 open |
How far San Francisco, CA is from the 20 largest US cities, in straight-line miles (not driving distance). Click a column to sort.
| From ⇅ | Straight-line distance (miles) ⇅ | Population of that city ⇅ |
|---|---|---|
| San Francisco, CA | 0 mi | 830,235 |
| San Jose, CA | 73 mi | 990,138 |
| Los Angeles, CA | 364 mi | 3,857,263 |
| San Diego, CA | 475 mi | 1,389,526 |
| Phoenix, AZ | 678 mi | 1,642,323 |
| Seattle, WA | 684 mi | 754,195 |
| Denver, CO | 986 mi | 718,877 |
| Oklahoma City, OK | 1,420 mi | 697,125 |
| Fort Worth, TX | 1,484 mi | 963,194 |
| Dallas, TX | 1,515 mi | 1,307,930 |
| San Antonio, TX | 1,516 mi | 1,479,835 |
| Austin, TX | 1,530 mi | 979,539 |
| Houston, TX | 1,673 mi | 2,328,253 |
| Chicago, IL | 1,885 mi | 2,711,226 |
| Indianapolis, IN | 1,979 mi | 885,860 |
| Columbus, OH | 2,142 mi | 914,802 |
| Charlotte, NC | 2,332 mi | 903,844 |
| Jacksonville, FL | 2,403 mi | 977,670 |
| Philadelphia, PA | 2,550 mi | 1,579,706 |
| New York, NY | 2,602 mi | 8,483,844 |
| City ⇅ | Straight-line distance ⇅ | Open jobs ⇅ |
|---|---|---|
| Alameda, CA | 42 mi | 38 |
| Belmont, CA | 43 mi | 2 |
| Redwood City, CA | 47 mi | 45 |
| Palo Alto, CA | 54 mi | 298 |
| Sunnyvale, CA | 60 mi | 83 |
| Fremont, CA | 62 mi | 6 |
| Pleasanton, CA | 63 mi | 6 |
| Milpitas, CA | 66 mi | 2 |
| Campbell, CA | 67 mi | 7 |
| San Jose, CA | 73 mi | 698 |
| Capitola, CA | 79 mi | 1 |
| Sacramento, CA | 103 mi | 53 |
OpenAI is the employer in this listing. See all its open jobs here →
We do not hold headcount or revenue for this employer. Check its careers site and, if it is listed on a stock exchange, its public filings (SEC EDGAR search).
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A private-sector role in technology (cloud, it and infrastructure) listed 204 days ago. The full description is on this page and on the employer's page.
San Francisco, CA. A remote or flexible location is listed; confirm with the employer which states are accepted.
Use the "View this job and apply on the employer's page" button. AtiveSite does not receive applications.
The listing does not publish pay. For the closest occupation (Electrical engineers) the national median is $120,630 a year (BLS OEWS, May 2025).
Median rent in San Francisco is $2,476 a month and median household income $140,970 (ACS 2020–2024).
It was posted on 2026-04-19 (204 days ago). Jobs older than 90 days are not shown.
Yes: browse cloud, it and infrastructure jobs in California.
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