Technical Program Manager, Infrastructure Systems & Tooling

About the Team

OpenAI's Industrial Compute organization is building and operating the infrastructure foundation for the next generation of AI. Infrastructure Operations works across facilities, hardware, network operations, incident management, data center engineering, delivery teams, and external partners to bring capacity online safely, understand its operational state, and improve it over time.

As OpenAI's data center portfolio grows across first-party and partner-delivered capacity, the organization needs clear goals, trusted data, repeatable processes, and systems that make ownership, risk, readiness, and performance visible. This role will help build the operating mechanisms that allow Infrastructure Operations to scale with rigor.

About the Role

We are seeking a Technical Program Manager to own the systems, data, reporting, governance, and program-management backbone for Infrastructure Operations. Reporting to the Delivery & Operations Lead, you will translate strategy into executable goals and operating cadences, turn operational needs into software and data solutions, and create the mechanisms that keep a rapidly evolving organization aligned and accountable.

This role will also own the current 1P+3P delivery-tracking layer within Operations: milestones, delivery timelines, quantity forecasts, risks, decisions, and executive reporting. You will partner closely with 1P Delivery Program Management, Compute TPMs, Data Center Engineering, construction, commissioning, and operations leaders to ensure that delivery information becomes complete, usable input for readiness, handover, and ongoing operations.

You will own program health and the operating system around it: the goals, data definitions, workflows, reporting, decision paths, and follow-through that help functional DRIs execute. The ideal candidate is comfortable in ambiguity, technically fluent enough to implement real systems, and relentless about converting scattered information into durable mechanisms.

Key Responsibilities

Establish and run Infrastructure Operations' goal-setting and operating cadence, including quarterly goals, weekly performance reviews, prioritization, action tracking, decision logs, escalation paths, and closure criteria.

• Translate leadership priorities into clear programs with owners, milestones, dependencies, success metrics, and resourcing assumptions; maintain source-of-truth hygiene across goals, status, dates, risks, and decisions.

• Build and operate dashboards, scorecards, and executive-ready reporting for operational health, capacity readiness, SLA and MTTR performance, delivery pipeline status, and material risks.

• Define authoritative data models and reporting standards for milestones, timelines, delivery risk, capacity state, readiness, handover, exceptions, and operational performance; drive consistent adoption across the portfolio.

• Own the 1P+3P delivery-tracking program across sites and partners, integrating schedule and progress inputs, maintaining quantity and timeline forecasts, surfacing risks early, and driving cross-functional follow-through.

• Define Operations' requirements for capacity acceptance and operational handover, including readiness evidence, risk and exception workflows, approvals, sign-offs, and post-handover action tracking.

• Own the Information Governance Process and controlled-document lifecycle across relevant Operations workflows, including standards, procedures, work instructions, templates, ownership, approvals, versioning, exceptions, and obsolescence.

• Lead operations software and tooling implementations from discovery through rollout: map workflows, write requirements, design data and integration patterns, partner with engineering and vendors, test solutions, and drive adoption.

• Improve the connections among reporting, ticketing, knowledge, delivery-tracking, sourcing, and operational systems so teams can work from consistent data instead of manual, fragmented updates.

• Program-manage cross-functional initiatives across Infrastructure Operations and its interfaces with Data Center Engineering, Compute TPMs, 1P Delivery, construction, commissioning, sourcing, and external infrastructure partners.

• Coordinate internal and external resources supporting systems, dashboards, process design, and document governance; make dependencies and ownership explicit while keeping functional DRIs accountable for their domains.

• Capture lessons learned, identify recurring operational bottlenecks, and implement automation and process improvements that make the organization more predictable, scalable, and effective.

You may thrive is this role if you:

• Have 8+ years of experience in technical program management, operations program management, infrastructure delivery, operations transformation, or a comparable role in a complex technical environment.

• Have led end-to-end software or systems implementations for an operations organization, including workflow discovery, requirements, data models, integrations, testing, rollout, adoption, and continuous improvement.

• Are fluent with dashboards, KPIs, operational data, and executive reporting; you can turn incomplete inputs into clear definitions, trusted metrics, and decisions.

• Have built governance mechanisms that work in practice: goal-setting, operating reviews, intake and prioritization, risk and issue management, action tracking, decision logs, and escalation.

• Bring experience with data centers, construction, commissioning, infrastructure operations, cloud, manufacturing, or another mission-critical physical-infrastructure environment.

• Can influence across senior leaders, technical DRIs, vendors, and partner organizations without relying on direct authority, and communicate clearly from working-team detail to executive summary.

• Are comfortable navigating ambiguity, changing ownership boundaries, urgent timelines, and high operational stakes while maintaining rigor and momentum.

• Hold a bachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Information Systems, Construction Management, Operations Management, Business, or an equivalent combination of education and practical experience.

Preferred Skills

• Experience with hyperscale or AI infrastructure, including 1P, 3P, colocation, or CSP delivery models.

• Familiarity with project controls, scheduling, operational readiness, commissioning, capacity acceptance, SLA/MTTR reporting, incident or ticketing workflows, and handover governance.

• Technical fluency with APIs, integration patterns, BI/reporting tools, workflow platforms, data quality controls, and automation; SQL or equivalent analytical skills are a plus.

• Experience managing vendors, consultants, or embedded support resources and converting ad hoc support into repeatable operating capability.

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.