--- title: 'Field Service Engineer at OpenAI' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/field-service-engineer-openai-united-states-bfknk4ehby4f' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-11-05' --- # Field Service Engineer at OpenAI - **Company:** [OpenAI](https://feeny.ai/companies/openai) - **Location:** United States - **Compensation:** $157k–$221k - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** remote - **Posted:** 2026-10-27 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-05 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/72aea491-406c-4a6f-abb4-66115f45d37c ## Job description ## About the Team OpenAI's infrastructure teams design, build, activate, and operate the critical systems that support large-scale AI compute. Field Service Engineering partners across design, construction, commissioning, site operations, hardware operations, and equipment providers to turn complex infrastructure into safe, reliable, and serviceable systems. ## About the Role We are seeking a senior, field service engineer to build the technical operating model responsible for critical electrical and mechanical infrastructure across our data center portfolio. This is a field-oriented electrical & mechanical engineering role, not a traditional facilities operations position. You will combine deep systems understanding in data center power and cooling systems to aid in SOO, design, maintenance & operability, troubleshooting and other engineering related responsibility around key equipment. The role will include leveraging training and experience to establish standards, develop people, coordinate vendors, and drive issues from design, first principles, first signals through verified resolution. The strongest candidates will have deep expertise in either electrical and mechanical systems and strong working fluency across the other discipline (e.g. controls, business acumen). Remote - travel 50% ## Key Responsibilities - Lead field support for startup, commissioning, troubleshooting, repair, and reliability improvement across critical data center infrastructure. - Serve as the senior technical owner for transformers, switchgear, UPS systems, generators, PDUs, protection and controls, chillers, cooling towers, pumps, CDUs, CRAH units, and associated control systems. - Diagnose complex failures across power, cooling, controls, and hardware interfaces; distinguish symptoms from root causes and drive corrective actions through validation. - Build the field service operating model, including staffing recommendations, coverage, escalation paths, response expectations, spare-parts strategy, documentation, and performance metrics. - Aid in hiring, development, and coaching other field service engineers and technicians while creating a culture of safety, technical rigor, accountability, and continuous learning. - Partner with design, construction, commissioning, site operations, and hardware teams to improve maintainability, readiness, and lifecycle reliability. - Manage OEM and service-provider relationships, technical escalations, repair plans, warranties, and sustained corrective action. - Establish and improve safe work practices, including lockout/tagout, switching and maintenance procedures, MOPs, SOPs, EOPs, and incident response. - Translate field learning into design feedback, preventive maintenance improvements, training, and reusable standards. ## Qualifications - 8+ years of hands-on experience supporting critical electrical, mechanical, or electromechanical infrastructure in data centers, industrial facilities, utilities, manufacturing, or similarly complex environments. - Deep technical expertise in at least one discipline, electrical or mechanical, with demonstrated ability to troubleshoot across electromechanical and controls boundaries. - Experience building, leading, or materially developing a field engineering, service, maintenance, or technician team. - Demonstrated success leading high-severity troubleshooting, root-cause analysis, corrective action, and reliability improvement. - Ability to read and use one-line diagrams, schematics, P&IDs, sequence-of-operations documents, control diagrams, equipment manuals, and commissioning records. - Strong safety judgment and experience working under formal energization, isolation, maintenance, and change-control procedures. - Clear written and verbal communication with engineers, technicians, vendors, construction teams, and senior stakeholders. - Ability to travel up to 50% and support planned or urgent field activity when required. - Bachelor's degree in engineering or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience. ## Preferred Skills - Experience with hyperscale data centers, high-density compute infrastructure, or other mission-critical environments. - Experience bringing new sites from construction and commissioning into steady-state operations. - Working knowledge of BMS, EPMS, SCADA, PLC, or other infrastructure monitoring and controls platforms. - Experience establishing service programs, readiness criteria, technical training, or fleet-wide reliability standards. - Relevant electrical, mechanical, HVAC, controls, safety, or trade certifications. ## 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. 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