Data Center Controls Network Engineer

OpenAI, Inc.

Job Overview

Location

San Francisco

Job Type

Full-time

Full Job Description

📋 Description

• As a Data Center Controls Network Engineer at OpenAI, you will design, validate, and scale the controls and OT network architectures that support high-density AI data centers, ensuring resilient, secure, and scalable infrastructure for mission-critical AI research and deployment.
• Day to day, you will define OT network requirements, develop reference architectures and design templates, review functional and basis-of-design documents, design physical and logical network topologies, coordinate firewall policies and segmentation, develop day-two operations procedures, and partner with electrical, mechanical, IT, security, and operations teams to align OT networks with GPU deployments and telemetry needs.
• You will work within OpenAI’s Data Center Engineering team, which defines the strategy, reference architectures, technical requirements, and delivery standards for large-scale data centers supporting OpenAI’s research, products, and infrastructure partners, collaborating across multidisciplinary teams to ensure OT systems meet the demands of high-performance AI workloads.
• In this role, you will deepen your expertise in industrial OT networking, mission-critical facility infrastructure, and secure OT/IT integration, while leading technical evaluations of vendors and integrators, supporting factory and site acceptance testing, and troubleshooting complex network issues using packet captures, logs, and field observations to drive sound engineering decisions.

🎯 Requirements

• 8+ years of relevant experience in controls engineering, industrial automation, OT networking, mission-critical facilities, or similar critical infrastructure environments.
• Hands-on experience with Layer 3 OT network design, including IP addressing, subnetting, routing, VRFs, ACLs, inter-VLAN traffic control, and network segmentation.
• Hands-on experience with industrial and infrastructure network equipment such as Cisco switches/routers, Juniper switches/routers, Palo Alto firewalls, Rockwell Automation Stratix switches, Siemens Ruggedcom or comparable industrial networking platforms.
• Experience with industrial communication and OT infrastructure protocols, including BACnet/IP, BACnet MSTP, Modbus TCP/RTU, OPC UA, IEC-61850 MMS/GOOSE, MQTT, SNMP, syslog, NTP/PTP, IRIG-B, and vendor-specific interfaces.
• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Network Engineering, Systems Engineering, or a related discipline.
• Ability to use logs, packet captures, and field observations to make sound technical decisions and communicate risk clearly.

🏖️ Benefits

• Opportunity to work on cutting-edge AI infrastructure at OpenAI, supporting the development and deployment of advanced AI systems.
• Collaboration with multidisciplinary teams across electrical, mechanical, IT, security, and operations to solve complex OT network challenges in high-density data center environments.
• Exposure to advanced industrial networking technologies and protocols used in mission-critical OT environments.
• Work environment that includes office, lab, construction, and live data center settings, with periodic travel to campuses, vendors, and commissioning sites.
• Commitment to equal opportunity employment and reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities.

Skills & Technologies

Python

PostgreSQL

MySQL

Azure

Terraform

Remote

Degree Required

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OpenAI, Inc.

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About OpenAI, Inc.

OpenAI is a San Francisco-based artificial intelligence research and deployment company founded in 2015. It develops large-scale AI models such as GPT, DALL-E, and Codex, providing cloud APIs and consumer applications like ChatGPT. Originally established as a non-profit, it later created a capped-profit subsidiary to attract capital while maintaining its mission to ensure artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.

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