Field Service Engineer

Compensation: $157K - $221K per year

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.

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.