Infrastructure Operations & Sustainability Lead

About the Team OpenAI’s Industrial Compute organization is building and operating the infrastructure required to support frontier AI at unprecedented scale. The organization works across data center development, power, design and construction, hardware, supply chain, deployment, facilities operations, and external partnerships. As this infrastructure footprint grows, OpenAI must ensure that sustainability, operational reliability, and responsible development are incorporated into infrastructure decisions from the beginning rather than addressed as separate downstream initiatives. About the Role We are seeking an Infrastructure Operations & Sustainability Lead to develop and execute the sustainability strategy for OpenAI’s global infrastructure portfolio. This role will translate environmental priorities and external commitments into practical operating requirements across site selection, data center design, construction, equipment procurement, deployment, and ongoing operations. You will build the frameworks, metrics, governance, and cross-functional programs required to improve environmental performance while preserving the speed, reliability, and scalability demanded by OpenAI’s infrastructure roadmap. The role will partner closely with infrastructure operations, site development, engineering, construction, power, hardware, supply chain, finance, legal, public policy, government affairs, communications, and external infrastructure partners. This is a senior leadership role requiring infrastructure fluency, sustainability expertise, executive judgment, and the ability to drive complex initiatives across organizational boundaries. Key Responsibilities • Develop and maintain a comprehensive sustainability strategy for OpenAI’s global compute infrastructure. • Translate sustainability objectives into actionable requirements for site selection, design, construction, procurement, commissioning, and operations. • Establish decision frameworks that balance environmental impact with infrastructure reliability, deployment speed, cost, and scalability. • Develop strategies addressing operational and embodied carbon, water stewardship, materials, construction impacts, waste, circularity, and equipment lifecycle management. • Partner with data center engineering and operations teams to identify practical improvements in infrastructure efficiency, resource use, resilience, and operational performance. • Incorporate sustainability considerations into self-build, colocation, cloud, and strategic infrastructure-partner decisions. • Establish measurable goals, operating metrics, dashboards, and governance mechanisms for infrastructure sustainability programs. • Improve the quality, consistency, and auditability of environmental and operational data across internal teams and external partners. • Work with hardware, manufacturing, and supply chain teams to develop supplier requirements and lifecycle strategies for infrastructure equipment. • Evaluate emerging technologies, design approaches, and operating practices and determine which should move from pilot programs into scaled deployment. • Develop business cases that clearly communicate environmental impact, implementation requirements, cost, schedule, and operational tradeoffs. • Partner with Public Policy and Government Affairs on infrastructure-related sustainability positions, regulatory developments, and external engagement. • Represent OpenAI in conversations with infrastructure partners, industry organizations, policymakers, community stakeholders, and other external parties. • Provide executive leadership with clear assessments of progress, material risks, strategic choices, and recommended actions. • Build repeatable playbooks that allow sustainability practices to scale across sites, geographies, infrastructure partners, and technology generations. Qualifications • 12+ years of experience in sustainability, infrastructure operations, environmental strategy, data center infrastructure, the built environment, or a related field. • Experience leading sustainability or operational-improvement programs across a large, complex, and geographically distributed organization. • Demonstrated ability to translate high-level environmental objectives into practical engineering, procurement, construction, and operational requirements. • Strong understanding of carbon, water, materials, waste, circularity, and lifecycle considerations within physical infrastructure. • Experience building metrics, governance systems, and executive reporting for complex operational programs. • Ability to evaluate technical, financial, environmental, regulatory, and reputational tradeoffs together. • Strong cross-functional leadership and the ability to influence senior stakeholders without relying on direct authority. • Experience working with external partners, suppliers, regulators, policymakers, or industry organizations. • Excellent written and verbal communication, including the ability to make complex subjects clear and decision-ready for executives. • Comfort operating in a fast-moving environment with incomplete information, changing priorities, and significant external scrutiny. Preferred Skills • Experience with hyperscale data centers, cloud infrastructure, industrial facilities, or another power- and resource-intensive operating environment. • Familiarity with data center design, construction, facilities operations, hardware supply chains, and infrastructure-development lifecycles. • Experience with embodied-carbon reduction, sustainable construction materials, water-positive programs, equipment circularity, or infrastructure-efficiency initiatives. • Knowledge of greenhouse-gas accounting, environmental disclosure frameworks, lifecycle assessment, and sustainability-related data systems. • Experience developing external partnerships or industry initiatives that produced measurable operational outcomes. • Familiarity with energy procurement and utility policy sufficient to partner effectively with dedicated power and energy teams. • Experience building or leading multidisciplinary sustainability and infrastructure programs through periods of rapid organizational growth. 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. 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