Data Center Electrical R&D Engineer

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.

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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