Infrastructure Construction Lead

About the Team:

OpenAI, in close collaboration with our capital partners, is embarking on a journey to build the world's most advanced AI infrastructure ecosystem. The Infra team is central to this mission, setting the core infra strategy and implementing this vision. From site selection to the buildout process, this team sits at the intersection of commercial, technical, strategy, and operations, interacting with teams and executives inside and outside of OpenAI.

About the Role:

OpenAI is tackling massive global challenges that span thousands of stakeholders, and we're looking for an Infrastructure Construction Lead to drive our data center construction, commissioning, and delivery efforts. This role involves managing complex projects with thousands of people and millions of components, overseeing initiatives at a regional scale, and ensuring seamless execution from start to finish. If you thrive in high-impact environments and want to shape the future of AI infrastructure, we'd love to hear from you.

Serving at the crucial intersection between project teams (ex. Site GCs, engineers) and OpenAI's central infrastructure needs, this role will be in a position of immense leverage. As such we are looking for an experienced leader. The catch? You get to lead the world's largest infrastructure project of all time.

This role will focus on managing the mission-critical construction projects across OpenAI's infrastructure portfolio. With an audacious goal of delivering GWs of data centers in the next few years, OpenAI is committed to developing a world-leading infrastructure project.

In this role you will:

• Establish the program for managing and de-risking data center construction and delivery

• Build strong executive relationships with general contractor partners, from the site teams up through the executive leadership

• Establish construction best-practices across all data center builds. This includes de-risking delivery timelines while ensuring commercial and safety standards are met.

• Ensure best-in-class pre-construction practices are in place across all supercomputer sites

• Evaluate and explore construction optimization strategies such as next-generation deployment technologies and processes

Qualifications:

• 10+ years of experience leading major construction projects; 5+ years leading data center construction initiatives

• Experience managing senior relationships at general contractors

• Experience working with construction permitting and regulatory authorities in the United States

• A seasoned capability to de-risk threats to project delivery including equipment, labor, and logistic challenges.

• Experience leading construction management teams, including internal and external stakeholders

• Experience establishing best practices in construction program/project controls, as well as critical standards

• Clarity of communications and comfort in delivering honest assessments to executive leadership teams

• Experience building and executing on a growth plan for internal- and external- construction management

Preferred Skills:

• 15+ years of capital projects or data center construction management

• Experience leading construction management teams at a data center hyperscaler

• Experience leading pre-construction teams and assessments

• Experience working for a general contractor, or major EPC, firm

• Experience managing global vendors and international logistics

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 do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability or any other legally protected status.

OpenAI Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement

For US Based Candidates: Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

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.

Compensation Range: $340K - $440K