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OpenAI is hiring its own civil and structural designers to build on-site power generation plants for AI data center campuses, a sign it is moving beyond buying grid power into owning the physical energy infrastructure behind frontier compute.
About the Team
OpenAI, in close collaboration with our capital and delivery partners, is building the infrastructure required to support frontier AI systems. The Data Center Engineering team defines repeatable technical standards and carries them through design, construction, commissioning, and operational readiness. The team works across data center facilities, power generation, compute infrastructure, construction, procurement, and operations to deliver reliable capacity at unprecedented scale and speed.
About the Role
We are seeking a Civil & Structural Architect to lead the CSA scope for on-site power-generation systems serving large AI data center campuses. You will develop and review site, foundation, structural, enclosure, and building solutions for generation plants and their balance-of-plant systems. You will connect equipment and vendor requirements to practical, permitted, constructible designs that perform safely through installation, startup, operation, and maintenance.
Travel: 50%
Responsibilities
Develop and review CSA basis-of-design documents, criteria, specifications, calculations, drawings, and vendor requirements for generation facilities.
Lead site layout, grading, drainage, roads, underground interfaces, equipment foundations, structural steel, buildings, and architectural enclosure design.
Translate generator, turbine, engine, transformer, switchgear, fuel, exhaust, cooling, and controls requirements into coordinated CSA designs.
Evaluate static, dynamic, vibration, wind, seismic, thermal, fire, acoustic, and maintenance-access requirements.
Coordinate geotechnical investigations, surveys, permitting packages, constructability reviews, and field-design changes.
Review consultant, EPC, OEM, and contractor deliverables and resolve design gaps at discipline interfaces.
Define CSA readiness checks before installation and startup.
Support procurement, factory and field reviews, construction quality, commissioning, and final turnover.
Create repeatable CSA reference designs and technical standards that can be adapted across campuses.
Qualifications
8+ years of civil, structural, or architectural engineering experience, including substantial delivery or owner-side review of power-generation facilities through construction, startup and operating handover. Demonstrated experience coordinating OEM foundation and support requirements, geotechnical and dynamic analyses, equipment alignment and settlement criteria, and construction verification.
Deep experience in at least one CSA discipline and demonstrated ability to coordinate the complete CSA scope.
Experience designing or reviewing foundations, structures, buildings, equipment support, site civil systems, and construction documents.
Experience with gas turbines, reciprocating engines, substations, central utility plants, or large generator installations.
Working knowledge of applicable building, structural, fire, accessibility, and energy codes and permitting requirements.
Ability to evaluate vendor data and multidisciplinary interfaces and convert them into clear design requirements.
Experience supporting projects through construction, field changes, commissioning, and closeout.
Bachelor's degree in civil, structural, architectural engineering, architecture, or a related field.
Preferred Skills
Professional Engineer or architecture license.
Experience with heavy-frame turbine, HRSG, steam-turbine, condenser and major piping/support interfaces.
Experience with modular or prefabricated power-generation systems and rapid site deployment.
Familiarity with BIM coordination, geotechnical risk, acoustic treatment, and blast or fire separation.
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.
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