Tech Lead, Deployment & Operations — Custom Infrastructure
AI research and deployment company building and deploying frontier AI products, including ChatGPT, Codex, and its API platform.
Projects
About OpenAI
OpenAI’s mission is to ensure artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. It consists of the nonprofit OpenAI Foundation and OpenAI Group, a public benefit corporation governed by the Foundation.
Skills
Candidate Availability
Required and preferred rules are kept separate and reflect the wording in the original posting.
About the Role
You will lead deployment and operations for OpenAI's custom silicon and systems, taking new hardware platforms from lab validation into production data centers. You will build operational processes, tooling and workflows, stay hands-on with debugging and failure analysis, and align cross-functional partners to deploy reliably at scale.
Requirements
- 8+ years of engineering experience in hardware systems, infrastructure, data center deployment, production operations, systems engineering or silicon bring-up
- Strong technical depth in hardware deployment, data center operations, rack-scale systems, validation, fleet operations or reliability engineering
- Experience bringing complex hardware systems from validation into production
- Experience working closely with silicon, systems, software, infrastructure, networking or data center teams
- Experience with deployment planning, incident response, debugging and root-cause analysis
- Experience building tooling, automation, observability or operational processes
- Demonstrated ability to hire, develop and lead senior technical talent
- Strong written and verbal communication skills
- Experience working in fast-moving environments
Responsibilities
- Lead a team responsible for deployment and operations of custom silicon and systems in data centers
- Own the path from hardware bring-up and validation through production deployment and fleet support
- Partner with silicon, systems, software, infrastructure, networking, data center, supply chain and external teams
- Define deployment processes, operational playbooks, readiness criteria, escalation paths and reliability practices
- Drive cross-functional execution across lab bring-up, rack/system integration, deployment, monitoring and debugging
- Stay hands-on through architecture reviews, deployment planning, failure analysis and operational debugging
- Identify gaps in tooling, observability, automation and validation, and plan to close them
- Establish metrics for deployment readiness, reliability, performance and operational health
- Build a strong engineering culture of ownership and technical rigor
- Contribute to architecture and design of future ML systems
Benefits
- Equity
- Performance-related bonus
- Medical, dental, and vision insurance with HSA employer contributions
- Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and commuter pre-tax accounts
- 401(k) with employer match
- Paid parental leave (up to 24 weeks birth parents, 20 weeks non-birthing parents)
- Paid medical and caregiver leave (up to 8 weeks)
- Flexible PTO for exempt employees
- 13+ paid company holidays and company office closures
- Paid sick or safe time
- Mental health and wellness support
- Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage
- Annual learning and development stipend
- Daily meals in offices and meal delivery credits
- Relocation support
- Charitable donation matching and wellness stipends
