The role
About the Team
OpenAI’s Hardware organization develops AI-native silicon and system-level solutions for the unique demands of advanced AI workloads. Building on efforts like Jalapeño, the team is developing future generations of AI-native silicon and tightly integrated systems to power the next generation of frontier models. By co-designing chips, systems, tools, and methodologies, the team helps deliver faster, more efficient, and production-ready hardware for OpenAI’s supercomputing platform.
About the Role
We are seeking a Operations Program Manager (OPM) to serve as the single-threaded operational leader for new hardware introductions (NPI) and production ramps across OpenAI’s AI infrastructure systems.
This role combines hands-on execution with strategic ownership. You will be responsible for defining the operating model, aligning cross-functional stakeholders, setting the critical path, making informed tradeoffs, escalating decisively, and ensuring hardware programs deliver on schedule, quality, cost, and scalability.
Success in this role requires comfort operating in ambiguity, influencing without authority, and driving alignment across internal teams and external partners—while keeping eyes firmly on long-term system scalability and repeatability.
In this role, you will:
Strategic & Leadership Ownership
- Act as the single-threaded owner for operational readiness across NPI and ramp, accountable for outcomes from early bring-up through sustained production
- Translate OpenAI’s infrastructure strategy and engineering objectives into clear operating plans, execution priorities, and decision frameworks
- Drive alignment across Engineering, Operations, Strategic Sourcing, Finance, Capacity Planning, and Executive stakeholders by framing tradeoffs, risks, and recommendations
- Proactively identify inflection points where decisions or investments are required to protect long-term scale, reliability, or cost targets
- Influence operational strategy with manufacturing partners by setting expectations on execution rigor, accountability, and continuous improvement
Program Execution & Operational Excellence
- Drive overall NPI build readiness, including material accountability, manufacturing and test readiness, product data availability, factory infrastructure, and qualification plans
- Lead transition activities from NPI to mass production, partnering closely with Sustaining Operations teams to ensure seamless ownership transfer
- Translate engineering requirements into actionable, factory-ready plans with tier-1 manufacturing and integration partners
- Lead cross-functional build and debug cadences; ensure issues are clearly owned, aggressively driven, and formally closed with root cause and prevention
- Drive factory and deployment ramp readiness, including throughput, site readiness, yield targets, quality controls, and reliability gates
- Own end-to-end risk management—identification, mitigation planning, escalation, and executive-level communication
- Surface systemic bottlenecks, inefficiencies, or failure modes; propose and implement durable solutions across process, tooling, and organizational interfaces
- Build, formalize, and scale repeatable operating mechanisms that enable predictable, high-velocity hardware development
Systems, Process & Partner Leadership
- Define requirements for operational systems (e.g., PLM enablement), and partner with internal teams to implement, test, and operationalize them
- Establish clear scopes, roles, and responsibilities across internal teams and external partners to ensure clean execution boundaries
- Build strong, trust-based relationships with contract manufacturers, OEMs, and integrators—driving accountability, performance, and transparency
- Support onsite factory builds and field deployments as needed (domestic and international travel)
You Might Thrive in this role if:
- 8+ years of experience in Operations, Engineering, Program Management, or equivalent, within hardware development, manufacturing, or supply chain domains (compute, networking, datacenter, or similarly complex systems)
- Proven track record leading complex hardware NPI programs end-to-end, from early bring-up through production ramp
- Strong understanding of manufacturing and supply chain fundamentals, including BOM management, ECO/MCO processes, build readiness, factory test, quality controls, and material planning
- Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional teams, influence senior stakeholders, and drive decisions in ambiguous, time-compressed environments
- Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to distill complex issues for executive and external audiences
Preferred
- Experience operating in hyperscale datacenter or large-scale infrastructure environments
- Familiarity with supplier engagement models, build cost drivers, and NPI scaling tradeoffs
- Technical background in server, rack, and/or network hardware
- Experience designing or improving operational processes, dashboards, governance forums, or execution metrics
- Experience supporting PLM processes and familiarity with ERP systems
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 https://cdn.openai.com/policies/eeo-policy-statement.pdf.
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.
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