infrastructure
Posted May 19Strategic Sourcing Manager, Compute Infrastructure
at openai
San Francisco, United StatesOn-site
Responsibilities
- - Drive competitive sourcing events, commercial structuring, and vendor accountability across the compute bill of materials.
- - Deliver portfolio-level visibility to executive stakeholders on progress, risks, and decision points with clarity and precision.
Requirements
- About the Team OpenAI, in close collaboration with our capital partners, is building the world’s most advanced AI compute infrastructure ecosystem.
- About the Role We are seeking a Strategic Sourcing Manager who is ready to take on global-scale challenges in AI compute supply and manufacturing — an opportunity to shape the future of supercomputing.
- As part of the Infrastructure Strategy & Delivery organization supporting Industrial Compute, OpenAI’s next-generation supercomputing platform, you will lead sourcing and strategic supplier engagements for compute infrastructure at hyperscale.
- Responsibilities - Develop and execute sourcing strategies for the next generation of AI compute infrastructure in partnership with engineering and program leadership.
- - Technical fluency in compute architecture, including GPUs, CPUs, server platforms, rack systems, cold-plate & liquid-cooling design, and associated power delivery subsystems.
- Experience with global manufacturing, supply chain readiness, long-lead materials, and ramp-to-volume for high-complexity hardware. - Familiarity with hyperscale data-center operational requirements, testing/qualification cycles, and integration workflows. - Procurement, supply chain, program management, or data-center hardware certifications are advantageous.
- About OpenAI OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence
Experience
- Qualifications - 10+ years of strategic sourcing and vendor management experience, with deep expertise in compute systems and hardware supply chains.
Additional details
- The InfraDev team is central to this mission, setting the strategy and executing the roadmap to scale our supercomputing footprint globally.
- From site planning to system integration, this team operates at the intersection of commercial, technical, and operational excellence, partnering with leaders across OpenAI and the industry.
- This role will drive commercial strategy and supplier accountability across server platforms, accelerators, rack systems, and associated thermal & power delivery components.
- This is not traditional procurement — it is foundational work enabling OpenAI to deploy compute faster and more efficiently than anyone in the world, while building deeply-integrated partnerships with the global compute supply chain. Key
- - Stay at the leading edge of industry and supply-chain trends to inform category strategy and long-range planning.
- - Initiate, negotiate, and manage commercial agreements across OEM/ODM/JDMs for accelerators, GPUs/CPUs, server platforms, rack systems, liquid-cooling components, PSUs, and supporting mechanical/electrical subsystems.
- - Secure capacity and optionality across a rapidly scaling compute supply chain while mitigating risk and ensuring manufacturing readiness.
- - Partner cross-functionally with engineering, program delivery, legal, operations, and finance to ensure sourcing strategies align with technical and program objectives.
- - Provide technical and commercial evaluation guidance during supplier selection and product qualification cycles.
- - Proven success negotiating complex capital procurement agreements and supplier capacity programs at hyperscale.