Tech Lead, Deployment & Operations — Custom Infrastructure

Responsibilities

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

Requirements

• 8+ years of engineering experience in hardware systems, infrastructure, data center deployment, production operations, systems engineering, silicon bring-up, or related technical domains
• Strong technical depth in one or more of: hardware deployment, data center operations, rack-scale systems, silicon bring-up, systems validation, fleet operations, reliability engineering, infrastructure automation, or hardware/software integration
• Experience bringing complex hardware systems from development or validation into production environments
• Experience working closely with silicon, systems, software, infrastructure, networking, or data center teams
• Experience with deployment planning, operational readiness, incident response, debugging, and root-cause analysis for production systems
• Experience building tooling, automation, observability, or operational processes that improve deployment quality and fleet reliability
• Demonstrated ability to hire, develop, and lead senior technical talent
• Ability to move fluidly between people leadership, technical strategy, and hands-on operational problem solving
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, especially in high-urgency, cross-functional technical environments
• Experience working in fast-moving environments

Nice-to-Haves

• Enjoy mentoring and developing engineers while staying deeply engaged in technical execution
• Excited by the challenge of bringing new custom hardware platforms into real-world production data center environments
• Comfortable operating across silicon, systems, software, infrastructure, and data center operations
• Comfortable leading through ambiguity, especially when the hardware, tooling, and operational model are still being built
• Strong judgment around deployment sequencing, technical risk, operational readiness, and when to escalate
• Care deeply about building practical systems, tools, and processes that work reliably at scale
• Bias toward ownership and comfortable jumping into urgent technical issues when needed