Operations Program Manager, AI Infrastructure

About the Team

OpenAI’s Hardware organization develops silicon and system-level solutions designed for the unique demands of advanced AI workloads. The team is responsible for building the next generation of AI-native silicon while working closely with software and research partners to co-design hardware tightly integrated with AI models. In addition to delivering production-grade silicon for OpenAI’s supercomputing infrastructure, the team also creates custom design tools and methodologies that accelerate innovation and enable hardware optimized specifically for AI.

About the Role

We are seeking an Operations Program Manager (OPM) to serve as the single-threaded operational leader for new hardware introductions (NPI) and production ramps across OpenAI’s AI infrastructure systems.

This role combines hands-on execution with strategic ownership. You will be responsible for defining the operating model, aligning cross-functional stakeholders, setting the critical path, making informed tradeoffs, escalating decisively, and ensuring hardware programs deliver on schedule, quality, cost, and scalability.

Success in this role requires comfort operating in ambiguity, influencing without authority, and driving alignment across internal teams and external partners—while keeping eyes firmly on long-term system scalability and repeatability.

In this role, you will:

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 need