Infrastructure Strategy and Commercial Lead - Energy

About the Team:

The Infrastructure Strategy team shapes OpenAI’s long-term infrastructure, data center and energy roadmap. We partner closely with engineering, operations, finance, and procurement to ensure our global infrastructure is cost-effective, sustainable, and resilient. Our work spans site selection, facility design, energy sourcing, and commercial strategy—enabling the compute capacity that powers OpenAI’s research and product growth.

About the Role:

This lead role will define and execute OpenAI’s energy sourcing strategy for data centers, ensuring we secure the optimal mix of energy sources—including solar, wind, nuclear, grid, gas, geothermal, and battery — to meet cost, reliability, and carbon goals. You will identify, evaluate, and negotiate with energy providers globally, structure long-term agreements, and align energy investments with our broader infrastructure build-out.

You will operate at the intersection of engineering, legal, finance, and operations—managing high-value negotiations, optimizing capital deployment, and guiding site-level energy decisions that will shape OpenAI’s infrastructure for years to come. This is a high-impact role with visibility at the executive and board level.

This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.

In this role, you will:

Energy Strategy & Supply Mix

• Develop OpenAI’s multi-year energy sourcing strategy for data center operations, determining the right balance of renewable and conventional sources.

• Evaluate solar, wind, nuclear, grid electricity, gas, geothermal, and storage solutions for cost, reliability, carbon impact, and scalability.

• Build frameworks for selecting site-specific energy mixes and integrating them into infrastructure development plans.
  

Provider Engagement & Negotiations

• Lead RFPs, commercial negotiations, and contracting with utilities, IPPs, renewable developers, and energy traders.

• Structure PPAs, tariff agreements, and supply contracts to secure long-term cost advantages and resilience against market volatility.

• Build partnerships with energy providers to support scalable and sustainable expansion.
  

Modeling & Investment Planning

• Create risk-adjusted financial models to evaluate energy projects, integrating capital costs, operating costs, carbon pricing, and market forecasts.

• Inform investment decisions on co-located generation, hybrid systems, microgrids, and storage solutions.

• Work with finance to align energy procurement with capital allocation and cost-optimization goals.
  

Site Selection & Integration

• Partner with site development teams to integrate energy sourcing into location decisions, factoring in interconnection costs, regional market structures, and incentives.

• Guide energy-related due diligence for new data center sites.
  

Cross-Functional & Executive Leadership

• Provide clear recommendations to OpenAI’s leadership and board on energy strategy, risks, and investment trade-offs.

• Partner with engineering, procurement, and operations to ensure energy plans align with compute capacity targets and operational constraints.

• Monitor market trends, regulatory changes, and emerging technologies to refine strategy over time.

You might thrive in this role if you:

• 7+ years in energy strategy, procurement, infrastructure development, or utility markets, ideally with large-scale, mission-critical facilities.

• Expertise in renewable and conventional energy sources, PPAs, interconnection, tariffs, and storage technologies.

• Strong financial modeling and scenario-planning skills, with experience in LCOE, risk-adjusted returns, and energy market analytics.

• Proven ability to negotiate high-value, multi-year infrastructure agreements.

• Track record of leading cross-functional initiatives under ambitious timelines.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with executive audiences.

• Bachelor’s degree in engineering, energy economics, business, or related field; advanced degree or certifications a plus.

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.

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with applicable law, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act. 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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