Tech Lead, Deployment & Operations — Custom Infrastructure

Hardware - San Francisco

OpenAI’s Hardware organization develops AI-native silicon and system-level solutions for the unique demands of advanced AI workloads. Building on efforts like Jalapeño, the team is developing future generations of AI-native silicon and tightly integrated systems to power the next generation of frontier models. By co-designing chips, systems, tools, and methodologies, the team helps deliver faster, more efficient, and production-ready hardware for OpenAI’s supercomputing platform.

We are seeking a Technical Lead to lead deployment and operations for OpenAI’s Silicon & Systems team. This person will become the Directly-Responsible Individual responsible for bringing OpenAI’s custom silicon and associated systems into data center environments, ensuring successful deployment, bring-up, validation, operational readiness, and ongoing reliability at scale.

This role sits at the intersection of silicon, systems, infrastructure, data center operations, and software. You will lead a team focused on taking new hardware platforms from lab validation into production data center deployment. You will be responsible for building the operational processes, technical workflows, tooling, and cross-functional alignment required to deploy and operate custom AI hardware reliably in OpenAI’s supercomputing infrastructure.

The ideal candidate is both a strong leader and a deeply technical operator. You should be comfortable staying close to the technical details of hardware bring-up, fleet deployment, debugging, system validation, data center integration, and production operations. This role requires strong execution, excellent cross-functional judgment, and the ability to drive clarity in ambiguous, fast-moving environments.

• Lead a team responsible for deployment and operations of OpenAI’s custom silicon and systems in data center environments

• Own the path from hardware bring-up and validation through production deployment, operational readiness, and sustained fleet support

• Partner closely with silicon, systems, software, infrastructure, networking, data center, supply chain, and external partner teams to ensure successful deployment at scale

• Define deployment processes, operational playbooks, technical readiness criteria, escalation paths, and reliability practices for new hardware platforms

• Drive cross-functional execution across lab bring-up, rack/system integration, data center deployment, fleet monitoring, debugging, and issue resolution

• Stay hands‑on technically through architecture reviews, deployment planning, failure analysis, operational debugging, and critical system‑level decision‑making

• Identify gaps in tooling, observability, automation, validation coverage, and operational processes, and build plans to close them

• Establish clear metrics for deployment readiness, reliability, performance, maintainability, and operational health

• Build a strong engineering culture grounded in ownership, technical rigor, operational excellence, and high‑velocity execution

• Ensure OpenAI’s custom hardware platforms can be deployed and operated reliably, repeatably, and safely at scale

• Be a contributor and technical driver for the architecture and design of future ML systems

• Enjoy mentoring and developing engineers while staying deeply engaged in technical execution

• Are excited by the challenge of bringing new custom hardware platforms into real‑world production data center environments

• Can operate across silicon, systems, software, infrastructure, and data center operations

• Are comfortable leading through ambiguity, especially when the hardware, tooling, and…