Operations Program Manager, AI Infrastructure

Responsibilities

Strategic & Leadership Ownership

• Act as the single-threaded owner for operational readiness across NPI and ramp, accountable for outcomes from early bring-up through sustained production
• Translate OpenAI’s infrastructure strategy and engineering objectives into clear operating plans, execution priorities, and decision frameworks
• Drive alignment across Engineering, Operations, Strategic Sourcing, Finance, Capacity Planning, and Executive stakeholders by framing tradeoffs, risks, and recommendations
• Proactively identify inflection points where decisions or investments are required to protect long-term scale, reliability, or cost targets
• Influence operational strategy with manufacturing partners by setting expectations on execution rigor, accountability, and continuous improvement

Program Execution & Operational Excellence

• Drive overall NPI build readiness, including material accountability, manufacturing and test readiness, product data availability, factory infrastructure, and qualification plans
• Lead transition activities from NPI to mass production, partnering closely with Sustaining Operations teams to ensure seamless ownership transfer
• Translate engineering requirements into actionable, factory-ready plans with tier-1 manufacturing and integration partners
• Lead cross-functional build and debug cadences; ensure issues are clearly owned, aggressively driven, and formally closed with root cause and prevention
• Drive factory and deployment ramp readiness, including throughput, site readiness, yield targets, quality controls, and reliability gates
• Own end-to-end risk management—identification, mitigation planning, escalation, and executive-level communication
• Surface systemic bottlenecks, inefficiencies, or failure modes; propose and implement durable solutions across process, tooling, and organizational interfaces
• Build, formalize, and scale repeatable operating mechanisms that enable predictable, high-velocity hardware development

Systems, Process & Partner Leadership

• Define requirements for operational systems (e.g., PLM enablement), and partner with internal teams to implement, test, and operationalize them
• Establish clear scopes, roles, and responsibilities across internal teams and external partners to ensure clean execution boundaries
• Build strong, trust-based relationships with contract manufacturers, OEMs, and integrators—driving accountability, performance, and transparency
• Support onsite factory builds and field deployments as needed (domestic and international travel)

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience in Operations, Engineering, Program Management, or equivalent, within hardware development, manufacturing, or supply chain domains (compute, networking, datacenter, or similarly complex systems)
• Proven track record leading complex hardware NPI programs end-to-end, from early bring-up through production ramp
• Strong understanding of manufacturing and supply chain fundamentals, including BOM management, ECO/MCO processes, build readiness, factory test, quality controls, and material planning
• Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional teams, influence senior stakeholders, and drive decisions in ambiguous, time-compressed environments
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to distill complex issues for executive and external audiences

Preferred

• Experience operating in hyperscale datacenter or large-scale infrastructure environments
• Familiarity with supplier engagement models, build cost drivers, and NPI scaling tradeoffs
• Technical background in server, rack, and/or network hardware
• Experience designing or improving operational processes, dashboards, governance forums, or execution metrics
• Experience supporting PLM processes and familiarity with ERP systems