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OpenAI is now sourcing transformers, switchgear, chillers, and other heavy electrical and mechanical plant for its own hyperscale campuses, which signals that the company is becoming a builder of physical data-center infrastructure rather than only a consumer of cloud capacity.
About the Team
OpenAI’s Industrial Compute organization is building the infrastructure needed to support the next generation of AI. We work with engineering firms, construction partners, utilities, equipment manufacturers, and strategic suppliers to deliver hyperscale campuses.
The Strategic Sourcing team develops the supplier relationships and commercial strategies that help these programs secure critical equipment, manage long-lead constraints, and deliver reliably at scale. We partner across Design Engineering, Infrastructure Delivery, Capacity Planning, Construction, Finance, Legal, and Hardware Operations.
About the Role
We are seeking a Strategic Sourcing Manager to lead sourcing strategy for electrical and mechanical infrastructure systems across Industrial Compute campuses. You will develop supplier and commercial strategies, negotiate agreements, and align supplier capacity with technical requirements and deployment plans.
The role spans both electrical and mechanical categories. Candidates should bring deep sourcing expertise in at least one discipline, with enough cross-functional fluency to partner effectively across both. Relevant backgrounds may include hyperscale data centers, mission-critical facilities, industrial construction, semiconductor manufacturing, or energy infrastructure.
Key Responsibilities
Develop sourcing strategies for critical electrical and mechanical infrastructure systems.
Lead supplier selection, RFx processes, negotiations, and contract execution for major infrastructure programs.
Build strategic relationships with manufacturers, EPC firms, integrators, and infrastructure suppliers.
Partner with Engineering and Infrastructure Delivery to align commercial decisions with technical requirements, project schedules, and deployment priorities.
Coordinate with Capacity Planning on long-term supplier capacity, lead times, and infrastructure roadmaps.
Evaluate suppliers’ manufacturing capacity, quality, financial health, delivery performance, and operational maturity.
Identify and mitigate supply risks through supplier diversification, capacity reservations, long-term agreements, and alternative sourcing strategies.
Monitor market conditions, manufacturing trends, commodity impacts, and other factors that could affect cost or delivery.
Establish supplier scorecards and performance measures for quality, cost, schedule, responsiveness, safety, and execution.
Develop market analyses, supplier benchmarks, financial models, and scenarios to support sourcing decisions.
Partner with Finance and Legal to structure scalable agreements and sourcing governance.
Qualifications
Bachelor’s degree in Supply Chain, Engineering, Construction Management, Business, Finance, Operations, or a related field.
8+ years of experience in strategic sourcing, procurement, supplier management, or infrastructure supply chain.
Experience sourcing major infrastructure systems, industrial equipment, or equipment for large capital projects.
Demonstrated success negotiating complex commercial agreements with strategic suppliers.
Strong understanding of supplier qualification, contract strategy, performance management, and sourcing governance.
Experience partnering with engineering, construction, finance, legal, and operations teams.
Strong analytical, financial modeling, negotiation, and executive communication skills.
Deep sourcing experience in electrical or mechanical infrastructure, plus the ability to work across the other discipline.
Preferred Skills
Experience sourcing one or more of the following categories:
Electrical: substation and transformer equipment; medium- and low-voltage distribution; switchgear; busway; UPS; protection, control, and monitoring systems; prefabricated electrical skids and e-houses.
Mechanical: modular cooling plants; chillers; heat exchangers; pumps; VFDs; air- and water-cooled systems; dry or adiabatic coolers; CRAH/CRAC units; air-handling equipment; piping, valves, and related components.
Modular data center infrastructure or fabricated enclosure systems.
Hyperscale cloud, AI infrastructure, semiconductor, energy, or advanced manufacturing programs.
Long-lead equipment planning and supplier capacity management.
Global supplier networks across North America, Europe, and Asia.
EPC, design-build, or integrated project delivery environments.
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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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.
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