# Data Center Infrastructure Electrical Engineer

**Company:** [OpenAI](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/openai)
**Location:** San Francisco, CA
**Role:** Hardware Engineering
**Salary:** $257k – $327k/yr
**Experience:** 10+ years
**Skills:** Mv/Lv Distribution, Ups Systems, Transformers, Switchgear, Pdus, Rpps, Busway, Grounding, Bms, Epms, Dcim, Scada, Fat, Sat, Power System Studies
**Posted:** 2026-04-19

> Senior electrical engineer designs and optimizes power systems for high-density AI data centers, evaluates vendors and technologies, leads testing and commissioning, and ensures reliability for liquid-cooled GPU deployments. Requires 10+ years experience in mission-critical facilities and bachelor's in electrical engineering.

## Job Description

## Key Responsibilities
- Design and optimize electrical topologies and equipment strategies that reduce cost, accelerate schedules, improve efficiency, increase scalability, and maintain high reliability and maintainability.
- Review and develop basis-of-design documents, single-line diagrams, equipment specifications, commissioning plans, and power system studies including load flow, short circuit, protection coordination, arc flash, and grid transient compliance.
- Lead technical evaluation of equipment vendors, manufacturers, design consultants, commissioning agents, contractors, and test labs. Review submittals, schematics, certifications, quality records, and test reports.
- Evaluate AC and DC power distribution options for high-density compute, including rectifier architectures, busway, rack power shelves, power supplies, cable management, redundancy strategies, serviceability, and fault isolation.
- Partner with mechanical, cooling, controls, hardware, networking, construction, and operations teams to ensure electrical systems support liquid-cooled GPU rack deployments and reliable facility operation.
- Drive FAT, SAT, witness testing, burn-in, reliability testing, interoperability testing, and integrated systems testing for critical infrastructure and rack deployments.
- Help guide and operate an R&D program to validate new equipment, rack designs, telemetry, operating envelopes, failure scenarios, and facility-to-hardware interactions.
- Define telemetry and controls requirements including metering, waveform capture, breaker and relay status, UPS and battery health, generator status, rack power, CDU status, coolant conditions, alarms, and control states.
- Analyze lab data, operational incidents, power quality events, nuisance trips, thermal excursions, controls alarms, and rack-level failures to improve designs, procedures, vendor quality, and reliability models.
- Create engineering standards, test procedures, commissioning scripts, operating procedures, decision records, risk registers, and concise executive summaries.
- Provide senior technical escalation support during design reviews, construction, manufacturing validation, commissioning, energization, deployment, and operational events.
- Raise the technical bar across partner teams in electrical design, safety, testing discipline, documentation quality, reliability, and operational rigor.

## Qualifications
- 10+ years of electrical engineering experience in mission-critical facilities such as data centers or comparable critical infrastructure.
- **Bachelor’s degree** in electrical engineering, power systems, or a related discipline.
- Strong hands-on experience with **MV/LV distribution**, transformers, switchgear, switchboards, generators, **UPS systems**, batteries, PDUs, RPPs, busway, PSUs, grounding, bonding, and protection systems.
- Experience producing and reviewing electrical designs, studies, equipment specifications, commissioning plans, test procedures, and acceptance criteria.
- Experience leading FWTs, FATs, SATs, integrated systems testing, failure-mode testing, and root-cause investigations.
- Strong understanding of codes, standards, utility coordination, safety requirements, and AHJ processes.
- Ability to evaluate conflicting technical tradeoffs involving reliability, cost, schedule, constructability, maintainability, and scalability.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to explain complex issues clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Comfortable operating in fast-moving environments with incomplete information and changing priorities.

## Preferred Skills
- 15+ years of relevant experience.
- Advanced degree in electrical engineering, power systems, or a related discipline.
- Professional Engineer license, Chartered Engineer status, or comparable professional certification.
- Direct experience with hyperscale data centers, GPU clusters, high-density rack deployments, or liquid-cooled compute environments.
- Experience qualifying new electrical products from prototype through certification, manufacturing ramp, deployment, and lifecycle support.
- Experience with **BMS**, **EPMS**, **DCIM**, **SCADA**, PLCs, protective relays, waveform capture, data historians, or reliability analytics platforms.
- Experience with modular power systems, rack-level conversion, **BESS**, **HVDC/LVDC**, or other advanced power architectures.
- Experience managing global, multi-site deployment programs or manufacturing quality programs.
- Familiarity with grid constraints, demand response, renewable integration, or low-carbon infrastructure strategies.

## Similar roles

- [Data Center Infrastructure Mechanical Engineer](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/30ef5392-77c8-4848-ae0a-7c54df8bbfa0) - OpenAI - San Francisco, CA - $257k – $327k/yr
- [Data Center Research & Development Engineer, Mechanical](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/67b8006d-118e-4fb7-a617-38de4372ef9c) - OpenAI - San Francisco, CA - $260k – $385k/yr
- [Electrical Engineer, Staff](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/5a173a9c-29bb-4ee3-b599-210c4262f93c) - 9 Mothers - Austin, TX - $250k – $400k/yr
- [Sr. Technical Staff](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/6dff032f-f822-4a4c-a63f-4baa28e0a6ef) - Cerebras Systems - Sunnyvale, CA - $250k – $275k/yr
- [Physical Design Engineer](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/f0c3730e-f7fc-4dc6-9cba-382f3efaa657) - Cerebras Systems - Sunnyvale, CA - $230k – $280k/yr

**Apply:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/003abd79-7222-43cd-830c-cb2de9b0dcf7
**Canonical:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/003abd79-7222-43cd-830c-cb2de9b0dcf7