Infrastructure Sourcing Operations Lead

About the Team

OpenAI's Industrial Compute organization is building and scaling the infrastructure required to support frontier AI. The Infrastructure Strategic Sourcing team connects technical and project requirements to supplier readiness, contracting, purchasing, equipment delivery, and portfolio-level risk visibility across owner-furnished contractor-installed equipment (OFCI), data center networking, rack systems and integration, fiber, cabling, optical interconnects, and related infrastructure.

The team partners across Pre-Construction, Design, Construction, Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, Network Engineering, Hardware and Rack Delivery, Strategic Sourcing, Procurement, Legal, Finance, Accounts Payable, Logistics, and external suppliers. We build the operating mechanisms that keep sourcing decisions, purchase execution, long-lead equipment, network and fiber dependencies, rack readiness, and delivery commitments aligned to infrastructure schedules.

About the Role

We are seeking an Infrastructure Sourcing Operations Lead to own procurement operations across pre-construction, design, construction, and sourcing through purchase order issuance, while maintaining visibility through invoice resolution, production, logistics, delivery, installation, and readiness. The portfolio includes electrical and mechanical OFCI, networking equipment, rack systems and integration, fiber, cabling, optical interconnects, and other infrastructure required to bring capacity online.

In this role, you will set priorities, make or escalate decisions that affect cost, supplier relationships, contractual position, and delivery schedules, and define the standards used by execution support for queue management, documentation, tracker maintenance, and recurring reporting. Success requires sound commercial and program judgment, operational rigor, systems thinking, and the ability to turn incomplete information across vendors, tools, and project teams into clear decisions, accountable actions, and credible leadership reporting.

Key Responsibilities

• Own sourcing-operations intake and prioritization, translating requirements and need-by dates across electrical and mechanical OFCI, networking, rack systems, fiber, cabling, optical interconnects, and related infrastructure into actionable procurement workstreams aligned to project schedules.

• Drive vendor readiness and onboarding; own exceptions, stakeholder commitments, escalations, and readiness decisions before purchase execution.

• Lead contract coordination for NDAs, service agreements, master agreements, statements of work, and related workflows; resolve nonstandard business issues and drive Legal and stakeholder decisions.

• Own purchase-order strategy, package quality, approval sequencing, urgent escalations, and exceptions through PO issuance.

• Review invoice exceptions involving quantity, pricing, tax, delivery evidence, payment terms, or other commercial discrepancies and determine the recommended resolution.

• Maintain portfolio visibility across electrical and mechanical OFCI, networking equipment, rack systems and integration, fiber, cabling, optical interconnects, and related infrastructure from design and configuration readiness through production, shipment, delivery, installation, testing, and exception closure; assess critical-path and capacity impact and lead supplier escalation.

• Own source-of-record requirements, including data definitions, status logic, milestones, permissions, restricted cost visibility, governance, and reporting quality.

• Design and continuously improve operating mechanisms, SOPs, intake processes, templates, escalation paths, and tool workflows across Procurement, Legal, Finance, vendors, and Infrastructure teams.

• Produce concise leadership reporting that distinguishes facts from assumptions, surfaces aging decisions and material risks, quantifies schedule or commercial impact, and recommends action.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in sourcing operations, procurement, infrastructure program management, construction operations, supply chain, or a related field, or equivalent demonstrated experience.

• Demonstrated ownership of complex procurement or capital-project workflows spanning vendor readiness, contracting, PO execution, invoice management, and delivery tracking.

• Experience integrating supplier commitments and long-lead requirements across OFCI, networking, rack systems, fiber, cabling, or interconnect infrastructure with design, construction, commissioning, deployment, and operational need-by dates.

• Strong critical-path, risk-management, and recovery-planning capability, with evidence of driving issues through closure under schedule pressure.

• Experience building scalable operating mechanisms, dashboards, KPIs, trackers, SOPs, and governance for data distributed across multiple systems and stakeholders.

• Sound commercial judgment and the ability to frame nonstandard contract, pricing, invoice, or supplier issues for timely decisions.

• Proven ability to influence Procurement, Legal, Finance, Engineering, Construction, suppliers, and senior leaders without direct authority.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including concise executive updates and clear separation of facts, assumptions, risks, and recommendations.

• Ability to manage multiple concurrent, high-priority workstreams in a fast-paced and ambiguous environment.

Preferred Skills

• Experience with hyperscale data centers, AI infrastructure, cloud infrastructure, mission-critical facilities, advanced manufacturing, or other large capital programs.

• Working knowledge of critical electrical and mechanical OFCI, data center networking, rack architecture and integration, fiber and structured cabling, optical interconnects, controls, and commissioning equipment, including the dependencies from design and configuration readiness through delivery, testing, installation, and startup.

• Experience with procurement, contract-lifecycle, workflow, and reporting platforms.

• Experience launching tools, participating in user acceptance testing, training users, and driving adoption of standardized processes.

• Bachelor's degree in engineering, construction management, supply chain, business, operations, finance, or equivalent practical experience; relevant professional certification is a plus.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity.

We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

For additional information, please see OpenAI's Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.

Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

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