Hardware Operations Engineer in San Francisco

About the team The Fleet team at OpenAI supports the computing environment that powers our cutting-edge research and product development. We oversee large-scale systems that span data centers, GPUs, networking, and more, ensuring high availability, performance, and efficiency. Our work enables OpenAI’s models to operate seamlessly at scale, supporting both internal research and external products like ChatGPT. We prioritize safety, reliability, and responsible AI deployment over unchecked growth. About the role As a software engineer on the Fleet High Performance Computing (HPC) team, you will be responsible for the reliability and uptime of all of OpenAI’s compute fleet. Minimizing hardware failure is key to research training progress and stable services, as even a single hardware hiccup can cause significant disruptions. With increasingly large supercomputers, the stakes continue to rise. Being at the forefront of technology means that we are often the pioneers in troubleshooting these state-of-the-art systems at scale. This is a unique opportunity to work with cutting-edge technologies and devise innovative solutions to maintain the health and efficiency of our supercomputing infrastructure. Our team empowers strong engineers with a high degree of autonomy and ownership, as well as ability to effect change. This role will require a keen focus on system-level comprehensive investigations and the development of automated solutions. We want people who go deep on problems, investigate as thoroughly as possible, and build automation for detection and remediation at scale. In this role, you will: Build and maintain automation systems for provisioning and managing server fleets. Develop tools to monitor server health, performance, and lifecycle events. Collaborate with clusters, networking, and infrastructure teams. Partner with external operators to ensure a high level of quality. Identify and fix performance bottlenecks and inefficiencies. Continuously improve automati

About the Team OpenAI’s Industrial Compute team is building and productizing infrastructure capabilities that help organizations deploy and operate advanced AI systems at scale. The team works across AI hardware, systems engineering, physical infrastructure, and customer delivery to turn emerging technologies into reliable, repeatable infrastructure solutions. Our work sits at the intersection of technical strategy, product development, engineering, and deployment. We partner closely with customers and internal engineering teams to solve complex infrastructure challenges spanning compute, power, cooling, controls, and facility efficiency. About the Role We are seeking a senior, hands-on Data Center Infrastructure Architect to develop and optimize the physical infrastructure required for large-scale AI deployments. This is a broad technical role spanning data center architecture, electrical and mechanical systems, high-density compute, controls, telemetry, and digital modeling. You will use simulation, operational data, and digital-twin approaches to evaluate infrastructure designs, identify system-level constraints, and improve efficiency, reliability, cost, and speed of deployment. The ideal candidate can move fluidly between first-principles analysis, facility and equipment design, computational modeling, engineering review, and real-world implementation. You should be comfortable working across disciplines rather than operating solely within electrical, mechanical, or software boundaries. Key Responsibilities Define system-level architectures for high-density AI data centers across power, cooling, IT equipment, controls, and facility infrastructure. Develop digital twins and other computational models that represent the behavior of data center systems under changing workloads, environmental conditions, equipment configurations, and failure scenarios. Use design and operational data to identify constraints, improve PUE and related efficiency metrics, and optimize

About the Team OpenAI’s Stargate and 3P Engineering teams are responsible for building and scaling the external infrastructure ecosystem that powers advanced AI systems. We work across hyperscalers, colocation providers, cloud partners, and strategic third-party operators to turn contracted capacity into production-ready compute. Our scope spans the full lifecycle of external deployments: commercial alignment, technical readiness, network integration, hardware enablement, operational readiness, and long-range scaling strategy. As OpenAI’s infrastructure footprint expands globally, we need leaders who can convert complex partner environments into reliable, high-velocity capacity for training and inference workloads. About the Role We are seeking a Technical Program Manager, Token-as-a-Service (TaaS) to lead delivery of external compute capacity that directly serves OpenAI model workloads. In this role, you will own complex cross-functional programs that transform third-party infrastructure into usable tokens at scale. You will partner across engineering, capacity planning, networking, hardware, finance, product, and external providers to ensure that deployed capacity translates into real production throughput. This role sits at the intersection of infrastructure execution, systems readiness, and business impact. Success requires strong technical fluency, elite program management, and the ability to drive accountability across internal teams and external partners. This is a high-visibility role with direct impact on OpenAI’s ability to scale model training and inference globally. This role is based in San Francisco, CA, with a hybrid work model of 3 days in office per week. Relocation assistance is available. Key Responsibilities Lead end-to-end delivery programs that convert external infrastructure capacity into production-ready token supply. Own readiness across compute, storage, networking, security, and operational dependencies for third-party environments. Build

ABOUT BASETEN Baseten powers mission-critical inference for the world's most dynamic AI companies, like Cursor, Notion, OpenEvidence, Abridge, Clay, Gamma, and Writer. By uniting applied AI research, flexible infrastructure, and seamless developer tooling, we enable companies operating at the frontier of AI to bring cutting-edge models into production. We're growing quickly and recently raised our $1.5B Series F , led by Altimeter Capital, Conviction Partners, and Spark Capital. Join us and help build the platform engineers turn to ship AI products. ABOUT THE ROLE This role owns Baseten's relationships and market intelligence across the hardware and chip layer of the compute stack: NVIDIA directly and key OEM partners such as Dell, Lenovo, Pegatron, and Supermicro. As Baseten's compute strategy increasingly depends on hardware access and terms, this role is central to keeping Baseten ahead of the market. WHAT YOU'LL DO Build and maintain relationships across NVIDIA and key OEM partners (e.g. Dell, Supermicro) Track market intelligence on hardware availability, roadmaps, and terms to keep Baseten informed and strategically well-positioned Support deal structuring and negotiation in partnership with Baseten's deal-making function Work closely with Infrastructure and Hardware Platform engineering teams to ensure consistent, high-quality provider relationships and engineering partnerships Represent Baseten credibly across senior relationships in the hardware ecosystem, escalating to company leadership when strategically valuable WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR Existing relationships and credibility within the NVIDIA, OEM, and HPC ecosystem Strong relationship-management instincts, with the judgment to know when to bring in senior leadership for maximum impact Comfort operating in a fast-moving, high-stakes market where hardware access can be a major competitive differentiator Collaborative style — this role depends on close coordination with engineering counterparts, not just ex

ABOUT BASETEN Baseten powers mission-critical inference for the world's most dynamic AI companies, like Cursor, Notion, OpenEvidence, Abridge, Clay, Gamma, and Writer. By uniting applied AI research, flexible infrastructure, and seamless developer tooling, we enable companies operating at the frontier of AI to bring cutting-edge models into production. We're growing quickly and recently raised our $1.5B Series F , led by Altimeter Capital, Conviction Partners, and Spark Capital. Join us and help build the platform engineers turn to ship AI products. THE ROLE This role owns Baseten's relationships and market intelligence across hyperscalers and strategic neoclouds, including NVIDIA cloud partners. This is a technical and commercial role in equal measure: you'll evaluate capacity from the GPU to the data center, negotiate cost and terms with suppliers, and stay close enough to the market to develop and defend a real point of view on where it's heading. Given current market conditions, Baseten needs a much stronger pulse on this part of the market so we can track pricing, stay close to the right relationships, and move fast the moment more capacity is needed. This is a senior, experienced hire who will also help pair with and develop 1-2 junior to mid-level teammates covering the same space. WHAT YOU'LL DO Build and maintain deep relationships across hyperscalers and strategic neoclouds (including NVIDIA cloud partners), working each organization from top to bottom rather than a single point of contact Maintain a consistent, "top of mind" presence with key accounts so Baseten is positioned to move quickly when capacity needs arise Evaluate capacity from the GPU to the data center — hardware generation, rack and node configuration, interconnect, power density, and cooling — so you know what a configuration will actually deliver, not just what the spec sheet claims Live in compute pricing daily: track rates by GPU generation, region, and contract term to keep Baseten inf

ABOUT BASETEN Baseten powers mission-critical inference for the world's most dynamic AI companies, like Cursor, Notion, OpenEvidence, Abridge, Clay, Gamma, and Writer. By uniting applied AI research, flexible infrastructure, and seamless developer tooling, we enable companies operating at the frontier of AI to bring cutting-edge models into production. We're growing quickly and recently raised our $1.5B Series F , led by Altimeter Capital, Conviction Partners, and Spark Capital. Join us and help build the platform engineers turn to ship AI products. THE ROLE As a Global Capacity Manager focused on TPUs at Baseten, you will lead the "engine room" for our non-NVIDIA accelerator fleet, architecting, securing, and optimizing the Google Cloud TPU (and broader emerging accelerator) capacity that powers our customers' AI workloads. You'll own the end-to-end journey of capacity management for this fleet, from securing large-scale TPU pod allocations to building the automation that ensures reliable uptime across multi-cloud environments. This role is a great fit for entrepreneurial engineers who want to bridge the gap between high-finance asset management and deep infrastructure engineering, with a specific focus on the TPU ecosystem. You will act as the fleet orchestrator for Google's TPU architecture, ensuring Baseten never experiences a capacity outage while maintaining elite unit economics as we diversify beyond NVIDIA. To be clear, this is a high-stakes engineering role. You will be hands-on with Kubernetes orchestration while also leading specialized pods focused on the latest generation of TPU hardware, like Google's Trillium (v6e) architecture, and partnering closely with the Model Performance (MP) team to ensure workloads are tuned for TPU-specific execution. EXAMPLE INITIATIVES The TPU Frontier: Architecting the infrastructure readiness and deployment strategy for Baseten's TPU clusters, including pod slicing and topology planning Global Workload Orchestration: Bui

ABOUT BASETEN Baseten powers mission-critical inference for the world's most dynamic AI companies, like Cursor, Notion, OpenEvidence, Abridge, Clay, Gamma, and Writer. By uniting applied AI research, flexible infrastructure, and seamless developer tooling, we enable companies operating at the frontier of AI to bring cutting-edge models into production. We're growing quickly and recently raised our $1.5B Series F , led by Altimeter Capital, Conviction Partners, and Spark Capital. Join us and help build the platform engineers turn to ship AI products. THE ROLE As a Global Capacity Lead at Baseten, you will lead the "engine room" of the company, architecting, securing, and optimizing the global GPU fleet that powers our customers' AI workloads. You’ll own the end-to-end journey of capacity management, from securing multi-million dollar GPU clusters to building the automation that ensures 99.9% uptime across multi-cloud environments. This role is a great fit for entrepreneurial engineers who want to bridge the gap between high-finance asset management and deep infrastructure engineering. You will act as the fleet orchestrator for the world's most advanced chips, ensuring Baseten never experiences a capacity outage while maintaining elite unit economics. To be clear, this is a high-stakes engineering role. You will be hands-on with Kubernetes orchestration while also leading specialized pods focused on the next generation of hardware, like NVIDIA’s Blackwell (B200) architecture. EXAMPLE INITIATIVES The B200 Frontier: Architecting the infrastructure readiness and deployment strategy for Baseten's first Blackwell GPU clusters. Global Workload Orchestration: Building "Multi-cloud Capacity Management" systems to move customer workloads seamlessly across regions to optimize cost and latency. Precision GPU Triage: Developing automated Go-based operators to identify, cordon, and repair unhealthy H100 nodes in under an hour. The Supply Chain of Intelligence: Partnering with lead

ABOUT BASETEN Baseten powers mission-critical inference for the world's most dynamic AI companies, like Cursor, Notion, OpenEvidence, Abridge, Clay, Gamma, and Writer. By uniting applied AI research, flexible infrastructure, and seamless developer tooling, we enable companies operating at the frontier of AI to bring cutting-edge models into production. We're growing quickly and recently raised our $1.5B Series F , led by Altimeter Capital, Conviction Partners, and Spark Capital. Join us and help build the platform engineers turn to ship AI products. THE ROLE We're looking for a Delivery Director, Capacity programs for our on-premises data center builds and neo cloud (GPU cloud) delivery programs. This is a high-visibility, execution-critical role sitting at the intersection of infrastructure engineering, capacity planning, vendor/partner management, and customer delivery. You will own the end-to-end delivery lifecycle for large-scale compute infrastructure — from initial site/capacity commitments through power, networking, and hardware bring-up, to production-ready GPU/compute capacity landing in the hands of internal teams or customers. You'll be the person who turns ambitious infrastructure roadmaps into predictable, on-time, delivery. RESPONSIBILITIES Own delivery of on-prem infrastructure builds — colocation expansions, power/cooling readiness, rack-and-stack, network fabric bring-up, and hardware acceptance testing — coordinating across colo providers and partners, network engineering, hardware ops, and vendor teams. Drive neo cloud delivery programs — manage capacity delivery from GPU cloud and neo cloud partners (e.g., colocation/bare-metal/GPU cloud providers), including contract milestones, capacity ramps, SLAs, and go-live readiness. Build and maintain master delivery schedules across concurrent, multi-site, multi-vendor programs, integrating power/shell timelines, hardware lead times, logistics, and software/platform readiness into a single critical path.

ABOUT BASETEN Baseten powers mission-critical inference for the world's most dynamic AI companies, like Cursor, Notion, OpenEvidence, Abridge, Clay, Gamma and Writer. By uniting applied AI research, flexible infrastructure, and seamless developer tooling, we enable companies operating at the frontier of AI to bring cutting-edge models into production. We're growing quickly and recently raised our $1.5B Series F , led by Altimeter Capital, Conviction Partners, and Spark Capital. Join us and help build the platform engineers turn to to ship AI products. Product at Baseten Product at Baseten is a nascent function. Our company today has a strong engineering culture, is heavily customer-obsessed, and moves fast. We're building the product function now, and you'd be one of the first people who will help define it. You'll work directly with our founders and with some of the best systems and infrastructure engineers in the world, and you'll set the standard for building great AI Infrastructure. PMs at Baseten don't sit above engineers - you earn ownership by being technical, finding the truth in front of customers, building great cross-functional relationships, and shipping great product experiences. The role Getting a model into production still takes real expertise — choosing a serving engine, sizing hardware, tuning it, wiring it into an app. We want a developer to go from "it runs on my laptop" to "it's serving production traffic" in minutes, on their own. You'll own the entire experience a developer touches to deploy and iterate: the CLI and SDKs, the console, onboarding, model discovery, deployment configuration, truss, and the increasingly agent-driven ways developers build. Your job is to make Baseten synonymous with Great DevEx and make it effortless to drive and self-serve deploy models on Baseten for far more developers than it is today. Impact and outcomes you'll drive You will collapse time-to-production — take a developer from first sign-up to a running, maint

What you’ll do Execute weekly system-level exploratory testing across the scanner and supporting software; log and triage issues with clear reproduction steps. Work with engineering to debug root cause and validate fixes. Help maintain the DHF and traceability between user needs, design requirements, tests, and results. Own practical test execution logistics (fixtures, test data, environments, calibration artifacts) and keep things repeatable. Help build the continuous testing strategy: automated tests where feasible, plus structured manual and system tests. Support V&V activities, including coordination with external partners as needed. What we’re looking for Strong hands-on testing instincts for complex electromechanical systems with substantial software. Ability to write clear bug reports and communicate risk/impact. Experience building and maintaining test plans/protocols; comfort operating lab equipment and debugging across layers. Useful experience Experience testing complex systems end-to-end (automation where it pays off, plus hands-on hardware/instrumentation). Medical device or other safety-critical environments and comfort translating risk into practical test coverage.

About OpenAI OpenAI is dedicated to ensuring that artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits all of humanity. Our mission requires building not only world-class AI models, but also the infrastructure that enables those models to be deployed reliably, efficiently, and at global scale. As demand for AI continues to grow, we are expanding the ways OpenAI can bring high-performance inference capacity online across a diverse hardware ecosystem. About the Team The GPT Infrastructure team builds software that turns advanced inference and optimization research into production products. One focus is enabling strategic infrastructure partners and accelerator vendors to qualify and onboard new compute without a bespoke porting and optimization effort for every hardware platform. We build the control planes, APIs, secure partner-side execution environments, evaluation systems, artifact pipelines, and operational tooling that make these workflows repeatable and trustworthy. The work sits at the intersection of distributed systems, AI inference, compilers and runtimes, performance engineering, security, and external partnerships. About the Role We are seeking an experienced systems generalist who can work comfortably across the stack to help build an automated inference optimization platform. Given a workload, target hardware profile, compiler and runtime context, and a trusted verifier, the system runs durable optimization campaigns that generate, compile, execute, grade, and improve candidate kernels, runtime configurations, and serving-stack changes. You will design both the OpenAI-hosted control plane and the partner-side software that evaluates candidates on real accelerator hardware. The product must keep long-running workflows reliable, make performance results reproducible, and maintain clear trust boundaries around sensitive model and hardware information. This is a deeply cross-stack role, combining strong software engineering fundamentals with systems thinking and

About the Team OpenAI’s Infrastructure organization builds the systems that power frontier AI workloads at global scale. As compute demand accelerates, our ability to rapidly convert infrastructure investments into usable production capacity has become mission critical. The CPU / Storage / PoP / WAN team is responsible for the end-to-end infrastructure layers required to bring compute online: server and cluster activation, storage platforms, Points of Presence (PoPs), backbone connectivity, and global network expansion. We operate across first-party facilities, colocation environments, and strategic cloud partners to ensure OpenAI can scale reliably and quickly. About the Role We are seeking a highly technical Program Manager to lead execution across CPU, Storage, PoP, and WAN infrastructure programs that directly unlock OpenAI’s next generation compute capacity. In this role, you will own complex cross-functional programs spanning compute cluster activation, storage deployment, PoP bring-up, and backbone expansion. You will coordinate hardware readiness, site readiness, network pathing, storage availability, vendor execution, and engineering dependencies required to turn contracted infrastructure into live training and inference capacity. This role requires strong technical fluency across hardware systems, network infrastructure, storage architecture, and deployment execution. You should be comfortable operating from rack-level implementation details through executive-level capacity planning discussions. This role is based in San Francisco, CA, with travel as needed. Key Responsibilities Lead end-to-end execution of CPU / GPU cluster activation programs across OpenAI’s global infrastructure footprint Drive readiness to convert contracted compute capacity into schedulable production clusters Own deployment programs for new PoPs, backbone nodes, WAN expansion, and interconnection initiatives Build integrated schedules spanning procurement, logistics, installation, st

About the Team OpenAI’s Central Procurement – Hardware Operations team is building scalable, AI-enabled operating foundations for a rapidly growing hardware footprint. We help the business move quickly while maintaining the data quality and controls needed to manage financial and operational risk responsibly. As OpenAI scales across R&D, new-product introduction, manufacturing, and third-party custody models, we are building the foundations to absorb complexity without adding unnecessary friction. That means establishing practical standards, strengthening discipline where it matters, using AI thoughtfully, and continuously improving how teams manage hardware operations. About the Role We are hiring an Asset Compliance Program Lead to establish the cross-business framework that gives OpenAI reliable lifecycle visibility over hardware-related financial assets and capital equipment. You will define the controls, systems roadmap, and evidence practices needed to manage those assets within OpenAI’s financial-control scope. This is a senior individual-contributor role in Central Procurement – Hardware Operations within Finance. Distinct from sourcing and transaction execution, you will partner with hardware business units, Accounting, Financial Risk Management, Procurement, contract manufacturers, and other third-party custodians to deploy practical operating mechanisms. These mechanisms will connect how assets are purchased, built, received, moved, held, verified, and retired with the ownership, data, reporting, and evidence needed for financial governance. The role covers those assets regardless of location or custody, including manufacturing equipment and tooling, supplier- and contract-manufacturer-held assets, leased assets, and other third-party-held equipment. You will stay close to the operational details—how assets move, where records diverge, which controls are not working, and where evidence is incomplete—and use that view to strengthen processes, accountab

About the Team At OpenAI, our User Safety & Risk Operations (USRO) team helps protect our products and users from abuse, fraud, safety risks, and other forms of misuse. We operate at the front line of real-world safety and risk management, translating user and operational signals into timely decisions, effective interventions, and improvements to our systems. This role sits on a team focused on building operational capacity for new, ambiguous, and fast-moving areas of work. The team defines what needs to be built, creates the operating model to support it, and works with partner teams to make the work scalable and durable over time. About the Role We are seeking a Device Safety & Risk Operations Specialist to build the safety operating model for a new category of consumer hardware. This is a senior individual-contributor role for someone who can turn emerging product risks and incomplete requirements into practical workflows, controls, launch plans, and durable systems. You will define how product-safety incidents, critical escalations, regulated cases, and privacy-sensitive issues should be identified, investigated, escalated, resolved, and learned from. You will also establish operational requirements for case management, data access, decision logging, quality assurance, monitoring, and cross-functional response. You will stand up priority workflows through launch and early operations, then help transition them into durable homes across USRO and partner teams. The right person combines deep operational judgment with strong technical and hardware product fluency. They can move from executive-level risk framing to detailed workflow design, tabletop exercises, launch readiness, frontline guidance, and post-launch improvement. Location / work model: San Francisco, CA; hybrid, 3 days/week in-office. Please note: This role may involve exposure to sensitive or concerning material. Strong discretion, judgment, and resilience are essential. In This Role, You Will:

About the Team At OpenAI, our User Safety & Risk Operations (USRO) team helps protect our products and users from abuse, fraud, safety risks, and other forms of misuse. We operate at the front line of real-world safety and risk management, translating user and operational signals into timely decisions, effective interventions, and improvements to our systems. This role sits on a team focused on building operational capacity for new, ambiguous, and fast-moving areas of work. The team defines what needs to be built, creates the operating model to support it, and works with partner teams to make the work scalable and durable over time. About the Role We are seeking a Device Safety & Risk Operations Specialist to build the safety operating model for a new category of consumer hardware. This is a senior individual-contributor role for someone who can turn emerging product risks and incomplete requirements into practical workflows, controls, launch plans, and durable systems. You will define how product-safety incidents, critical escalations, regulated cases, and privacy-sensitive issues should be identified, investigated, escalated, resolved, and learned from. You will also establish operational requirements for case management, data access, decision logging, quality assurance, monitoring, and cross-functional response. You will stand up priority workflows through launch and early operations, then help transition them into durable homes across USRO and partner teams. The right person combines deep operational judgment with strong technical and hardware product fluency. They can move from executive-level risk framing to detailed workflow design, tabletop exercises, launch readiness, frontline guidance, and post-launch improvement. Location / work model: San Francisco, CA; hybrid, 3 days/week in-office. Please note: This role may involve exposure to sensitive or concerning material. Strong discretion, judgment, and resilience are essential. In This Role, You Will: