Technical Program Manager, Infrastructure Systems & Tooling
OpenAI · San Francisco, United States · 22d ago
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.
Qualifications
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.
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