Supplier Quality Engineer

OpenAI is building cutting-edge consumer hardware—connected devices, embedded systems, user-facing hardware—that bring our vision of safe, beneficial AGI into everyday life. We are seeking a Supplier Quality Engineer (SQE) to ensure that every component, part, and assembly provided by our suppliers meets the highest standards of reliability, manufacturability, and performance. You will be a key part of enabling our products to move from concept, through prototyping and pilot, into high-volume manufacturing with high quality and consistency.

What You’ll Do

• Define, implement, and manage supplier quality standards, procedures, and expectations aligned with product requirements, regulatory needs, and industry best practices.

• Evaluate and qualify potential suppliers: perform audits on their processes, capabilities, quality systems, and compliance.

• Collaborate cross-functionally to ensure quality is considered early in the design cycle.

• Lead failure analysis / root cause investigations for supplier-sourced parts or assemblies; drive corrective actions and preventive plans.

• Monitor supplier performance via metrics (e.g. yield, defect rates, delivery quality, response times) and drive continuous improvement.

• Establish and maintain New Product Introduction (NPI) quality control processes: define clear milestones, acceptance criteria, sampling plans, test procedures.

• Conduct regular supplier audits and site visits (domestic and international) as needed; maintain records and ensure ongoing compliance.

• Support risk assessment and mitigation related to supplier materials, quality, capacity, or process changes.

• Collaborate closely with others across the supply chain to ensure quality across all nodes, both upstream and downstream, from the component level through FATP.

• Aggregate and interpret data from manufacturing, reliability, test, and the field; develop dashboards and analytics that surface trends, defect paretos, DPPM, and top issues in real time. Leverage AI/ML methodologies to the fullest extent.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree (or equivalent) in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Materials Science, or related field.

• 5-8+ years experience in supplier / external manufacturing quality engineering, preferably in consumer hardware or adjacent industries.

• Strong experience with failure analysis, root cause determination, corrective/preventive actions.

• Proficient in statistical quality methodologies: e.g. SPC, capability studies, control charts, sampling plans, FMEA.

• Experience qualifying suppliers and conducting supplier audits.

• Familiarity with New Product Introduction processes, design for manufacturability (DFM), test strategies, etc.

• Excellent communication skills, including working across functions and geographies.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working with global suppliers, contract manufacturers (CMs), joint development manufacturers (JDMs), etc.

• Hands-on knowledge of electrical and mechanical subsystems for consumer devices (e.g., PCBs, connectors, sensors, enclosure materials).

• Experience with reliability test standards, accelerated life testing, environmental testing.

• Ability/willingness to travel to supplier sites (domestic & international).

Why Join Us

• You’ll help shape products that millions will rely on—making reliability, safety, and quality first class.

• Collaboration with some of the best engineers in hardware, firmware, design, supply chain.

• Opportunity to build quality systems from early‐stage concepts through mass production.

• Competitive compensation + equity + benefits.

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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At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.