---
title: 'Data Center Electrical R&D Engineer at OpenAI'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/data-center-electrical-r-d-engineer-openai-san-francisco-1dms57165nwe'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-11-05'
---

# Data Center Electrical R&D Engineer at OpenAI

- **Company:** [OpenAI](https://feeny.ai/companies/openai)
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-10-26
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-05
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/c3d39767-3824-4d41-83dd-7b132834b122

## Job description

## About the Team

OpenAI, in close collaboration with our capital partners, is building the world’s most advanced AI infrastructure ecosystem. The team defines the technical direction for next-generation data centers and develops the architectures needed to support rapidly evolving AI hardware and workload requirements. Operating at the intersection of research, engineering, infrastructure, and deployment, the team translates emerging compute requirements into validated electrical designs, reference architectures, prototypes, and scalable infrastructure solutions.

## About the Role

We are seeking an experienced Data Center Electrical R&D Engineer to develop and validate next-generation power architectures for high-density AI infrastructure. This role is focused on research, advanced design, modeling, prototyping, and technical validation rather than ongoing facility operations. You will investigate emerging electrical technologies, develop system-level architectures, and evaluate new approaches to utility integration, power distribution, backup generation, energy storage, controls, and rack-level power delivery. You will work closely with compute hardware, mechanical, controls, construction, commissioning, operations, and external technology partners. Your work will shape reusable reference designs that can move from concept and simulation through pilot testing and large-scale deployment.

## Key Responsibilities

- Develop advanced electrical architectures for high-density AI data centers, from utility interconnection through rack-level power delivery.
- Translate evolving compute-platform requirements into electrical capacity, topology, redundancy, power-quality, protection, and control requirements.
- Create conceptual designs, basis-of-design documents, specifications, one-line diagrams, design standards, and reusable reference architectures.
- Model electrical-system performance, capacity, efficiency, reliability, fault conditions, transient behavior, and failure scenarios.
- Evaluate emerging technologies such as medium-voltage distribution, solid-state power conversion, advanced UPS systems, energy storage, alternative generation, and direct-current architectures.
- Build technical and economic comparisons across competing design approaches, including reliability, efficiency, scalability, cost, constructability, maintainability, and deployment speed.
- Develop prototypes, test plans, acceptance criteria, and validation frameworks for new electrical technologies and system architectures.
- Lead laboratory, factory, pilot-site, and field testing to validate design assumptions and identify performance or integration gaps.
- Partner with mechanical and thermal engineers to optimize power and cooling architectures as an integrated system.
- Collaborate with AI hardware and compute teams to understand workload behavior, rack density, utilization, power variability, and future platform requirements.
- Work with controls and software teams to define instrumentation, telemetry, protection, monitoring, and automated-control requirements.
- Partner with construction, commissioning, and operations teams to ensure new designs can be safely built, tested, operated, and maintained.
- Engage equipment manufacturers, utilities, engineering consultants, and research partners to evaluate capabilities and accelerate technology development.
- Investigate system failures and unexpected test results, identify root causes, and translate findings into design improvements.
- Document validated designs, technical decisions, operating envelopes, lessons learned, and deployment guidance.
- Provide technical direction and design-review leadership across internal teams and external engineering partners.

## Qualifications

- 10+ years of experience in electrical engineering, power-system design, data-center infrastructure, industrial power, or another critical-infrastructure environment.
- Deep expertise in electrical power distribution, including medium- and low-voltage systems, substations, transformers, switchgear, protection, UPS systems, generators, and rack-level power delivery.
- Demonstrated experience developing electrical designs for large, complex, or high-availability facilities.
- Strong understanding of power-system modeling, short-circuit analysis, load flow, coordination studies, arc-flash analysis, power quality, grounding, and reliability.
- Experience translating uncertain or evolving technical requirements into testable engineering concepts and system architectures.
- Experience designing experiments, prototypes, pilots, or validation programs for new equipment or infrastructure technologies.
- Ability to reason across electrical, mechanical, controls, compute hardware, construction, commissioning, and operational boundaries.
- Experience evaluating engineering tradeoffs using quantitative analysis, simulation, testing, and field data.
- Strong technical writing and communication skills, including the ability to explain complex engineering decisions to technical and executive audiences.
- Experience directing engineering consultants, equipment manufacturers, and external technology partners.
- Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering or a related engineering discipline.

## Preferred Skills

- Master’s degree or PhD in electrical engineering, power systems, power electronics, energy systems, or a related field.
- Professional Engineer license or equivalent professional certification.
- Experience supporting high-density data centers, AI infrastructure, semiconductor manufacturing, advanced industrial facilities, or hyperscale computing environments.
- Experience with ETAP, SKM, EasyPower, PSCAD, MATLAB/Simulink, or comparable power-system analysis tools.
- Experience with power electronics, energy storage, microgrids, alternative generation, or advanced grid-interconnection technologies.
- Familiarity with digital twins, hardware-in-the-loop testing, real-time simulation, and data-driven infrastructure optimization.
- Experience carrying a new technology from research or prototype through qualification, commissioning, and scaled deployment.
- Knowledge of electrical codes, utility requirements, safety standards, and regulatory requirements across multiple geographies.
- Published research, patents, technical standards contributions, or demonstrated invention in electrical or critical-infrastructure systems.

## 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](https://cdn.openai.com/policies/eeo-policy-statement.pdf). 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. To notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant, please submit a report through [this form](https://form.asana.com/?d=57018692298241&k=5MqR40fZd7jlxVUh5J-UeA). No response will be provided to inquiries unrelated to job posting compliance. We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this [link](https://form.asana.com/?k=bQ7w9h3iexRlicUdWRiwvg&d=57018692298241). [OpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy](https://cdn.openai.com/policies/global-employee-and-contractor-privacy-policy.pdf) At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.

## About OpenAI

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company with a mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits all of humanity.
- **Entity Type**: Private – structured as a nonprofit parent (OpenAI Foundation) governing a for-profit public benefit corporation (OpenAI Group). The company has confidentially submitted a draft S-1 registration statement to the SEC, signaling a potential future IPO.
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, USA
- **Founded**: 2015
- **Founders**: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, John Schulman, Wojciech Zaremba, and others

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Artificial intelligence research and deployment
- **Target customers**: B2B (enterprises via API and platform), B2C (ChatGPT users), and developers (API, open-source models)
- **Mission**: To ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) – AI systems that are generally smarter than humans – benefits all of humanity.

## Products & Services
- **[ChatGPT](https://openai.com/chatgpt)**: Conversational AI assistant available via web and mobile, used by consumers and integrated into enterprise workflows.
- **[GPT-4 API](https://openai.com/product)**: Large language model accessed via API for developers to build AI-powered applications (text generation, summarization, code assistance, etc.).
- **[DALL-E](https://openai.com/dall-e-3)**: Image generation model that creates images from natural language descriptions.
- **[Whisper](https://openai.com/research/whisper)**: Open-source speech recognition system.
- **[OpenAI Agents](https://openai.com/)**: Emerging product category focused on autonomous AI agents that can perform tasks on behalf of users (announced June 2026).

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed in the provided sources. Widely reported in the press at ~$300 billion as of early 2026 (post-funding round), but this figure is not confirmed by OpenAI’s official materials.
- **Key Metric**: Total funding exceeds $13 billion from Microsoft and other investors. The company has also confidentially filed a draft S-1 with the SEC (see [openai.com](https://openai.com/) – “Confidential submission of draft S-1”).
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Microsoft (strategic partner and largest investor), with additional participation from Thrive Capital, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and others.
- **Growth Signals**: Active hiring with 721 open roles posted; expansion into agent-based products; confidential IPO filing; continued deployment of frontier models.

## Competitive Advantages
- **First-mover & brand recognition**: ChatGPT became the fastest-growing consumer app in history, establishing OpenAI as the household name in generative AI.
- **Research leadership**: Consistently publishes cutting-edge research (GPT-4, DALL-E 3, Whisper, etc.) and attracts top AI talent.
- **Compute & infrastructure**: Exclusive partnership with Microsoft provides massive cloud computing resources (Azure) for training and inference.
- **Unique governance structure**: The nonprofit parent ensures mission alignment (AGI benefiting humanity) while the for-profit arm can raise capital and scale products.

## Strategic Focus
- **Safe AGI development**: Continued emphasis on safety research, alignment, and responsible deployment (e.g., safety systems, model provenance).
- **Enterprise expansion**: Growing ChatGPT Enterprise and API offerings for businesses.
- **Agentic AI**: Building autonomous agents that can “transform work” (announced June 2026).
- **IPO preparation**: Confidential S-1 filing indicates intent to go public, which will require increased financial transparency and governance maturity.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture & values**: OpenAI’s stated values include “Humanity first,” “Act with humility,” “Feel the AGI,” and “Ship joy.” Operating principles emphasize agency, creativity, rapid iteration, and intense focus.
- **Benefits**: Competitive health insurance, mental healthcare support, 24-week paid birth-parent leave (plus 20 weeks for other parents), generous PTO, annual learning & development stipend, daily meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner), and a domestic conference budget.
- **Work environment**: Hybrid/office-based (San Francisco headquarters). The company offers a residency program for researchers and engineers transitioning into AI.
- **Impact**: Employees work directly on frontier AI models that shape the industry and society. The mission-driven nature attracts talent passionate about AGI’s societal implications.

## Sources
1. [OpenAI About Page](https://openai.com/about/)
2. [OpenAI Careers Page](https://openai.com/careers/)
3. [OpenAI Job Search](https://openai.com/careers/search)
4. [OpenAI Homepage](https://openai.com/)

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