Manufacturing Quality Engineer – Hardware

OpenAI is building advanced AI-powered devices — and delivering them at the highest levels of quality is non-negotiable. We’re seeking a manufacturing quality engineer to ensure our products meet uncompromising standards of performance, durability, and finish, from the first prototype to high-volume production.

You will be the link between product design and manufacturing, bringing deep expertise in mechanical, optical, and materials quality. This role involves setting quality standards, driving supplier excellence, solving complex yield issues, and working across the supply chain to guarantee that every OpenAI hardware product is flawless when it reaches our customers.

In this role, you will:

• Define and implement quality control processes for new hardware products, ensuring they meet or exceed design intent and user expectations.
  

• Partner with design engineering to translate product requirements into measurable manufacturing quality standards.
  

• Lead DFx (Design for Quality/Manufacturing) reviews to identify and mitigate risks early in the design cycle with designers and other Mfg. team members.
  

• Develop and validate inspection criteria, test plans, and acceptance standards for mechanical, optical, and material components.
  

• Drive root cause analysis and corrective action for yield issues in pilot and mass production.
  

• Manage supplier quality performance, including audits, process capability studies, and continuous improvement initiatives.
  

• Collaborate with manufacturing partners to ensure process stability, repeatability, and adherence to OpenAI’s quality standards.
  

• Implement and maintain statistical process control (SPC) systems to monitor and improve manufacturing performance.
  

• Support new product introduction (NPI) builds, from EVT through MP and sustainting to ensure smooth ramp-up to high-volume production.
  

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Have extensive experience in manufacturing quality engineering for consumer electronics or other high-precision hardware.
  

• Are comfortable working with complex mechanical and optical systems, premium materials, and tight tolerances.
  

• Can balance speed to market with rigorous quality assurance.
  

• Excel in cross-functional environments, collaborating with design, operations, manufacturing, and suppliers.
  

• Have a track record of improving yields and resolving challenging quality issues in fast-paced production environments.
  

Preferred qualifications:

• 10+ years in manufacturing quality, ideally in consumer electronics.
  

• Expertise in mechanical, optical, and/or materials engineering for hardware products.
  

• Experience with high-volume overseas manufacturing and global supply chains.
  

• Proficiency in statistical analysis, SPC, and quality tools such as FMEA, PPAP, and Six Sigma.
  

• Proven ability to lead supplier quality management and audits in Asia and North America.
  

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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