Rack Power Engineer

About the Team OpenAI’s Hardware organization develops AI-native silicon and system-level solutions for the unique demands of advanced AI workloads. Building on efforts like Jalapeño, the team is developing future generations of AI-native silicon and tightly integrated systems to power the next generation of frontier models. By co-designing chips, systems, tools, and methodologies, the team helps deliver faster, more efficient, and production-ready hardware for OpenAI’s supercomputing platform. About the Role We’re looking for a Rack Power Engineer with deep expertise in high-power conversion and distribution to design, qualify, and support power systems for AI supercomputers. You will own rack power solutions—including power shelves, AC/DC rectifiers, power supply units (PSUs), power management controllers (PMCs), and high-current distribution—from requirements and supplier development through deployment. You will also monitor fleet rack power health, lead debugging and root-cause investigations, and drive improvements into hardware, firmware, and qualification coverage. 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: - Own rack power architecture and requirements for high-power AI supercomputing systems, including power budgets, AC input interfaces, DC distribution, redundancy, efficiency, serviceability, and integration with data center infrastructure. - Drive the design and supplier development of power shelves, rectifiers, PSUs, PMCs, busbars, connectors, and protection circuits. Review electrical designs and control behavior, and evaluate performance, cost, reliability, and availability trade-offs. - Define and execute component, shelf, and rack qualification plans covering load transients, current sharing, hot-swap, startup and shutdown, redundancy failover, fault protection and recovery, thermal limits, and AC disturbances and ride-through. - Partner with firmware and software teams to define and validate PMC functionality, telemetry, alarms, power sequencing, power capping, and fault handling. Verify communication interfaces, firmware updates, interoperability, and regression coverage. - Characterize rack power under representative AI workloads. Translate steady-state demand and fast power excursions into design margins, protection settings, energy-storage needs, and deployment requirements with system and data center teams. - Establish fleet rack power health metrics with operations teams. Analyze telemetry, event logs, and failure trends to detect degraded power capacity, redundancy loss, current imbalance, and recurring power faults. - Lead lab and fleet debugging across power hardware, firmware, and system interfaces. Reproduce failures, identify root causes with suppliers, validate corrective actions, and feed lessons into designs, qualification tests, and fleet remediation. - Work with electrical, mechanical, thermal, firmware, manufacturing, reliability, and data center teams to take rack power systems through prototype builds, qualification, production, and deployment. Drive supplier test reviews, manufacturing test coverage, and closure of power-related issues. - Evaluate emerging rack power technologies, including higher-voltage DC distribution and battery or supercapacitor energy storage. Partner with suppliers to qualify viable solutions and with safety and compliance teams to address applicable product requirements. You might thrive in this role if you: - Have at least 10 years of industry experience in power electronics or power delivery systems, including hands-on design and qualification of high-power rack or data center power systems. - Have a master’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Power Electronics, a related field, or equivalent practical experience. - Have strong knowledge of AC/DC rectifiers, power shelves, PSUs, and DC distribution, including three-phase inputs, power conversion topologies, control-loop stability, current sharing, redundancy, protection coordination, and high-current busbars and connectors. - Have experience defining and qualifying PMCs or related power controllers, including telemetry, fault management, hardware–firmware integration, and interfaces such as PMBus, I²C, CAN, or Ethernet. Understand how rack power controls interact with system power management. - Have strong laboratory and debugging skills using oscilloscopes, power analyzers, programmable AC sources, electronic loads, and data acquisition systems. Can build automated tests, analyze fleet telemetry with tools such as Python, and drive root-cause investigations through verified corrective actions. - Have taken power products from requirements through qualification and production with suppliers and cross-functional teams. Bring familiarity with safety, EMC, and reliability qualification; communicate technical trade-offs clearly; and work effectively through ambiguity. Experience with high-density AI racks, OCP power architectures, or energy-storage systems is a plus. To comply with U.S. export control laws and regulations, candidates for this role may need to meet certain legal status requirements as provided in those laws and regulations. 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 https://cdn.openai.com/policies/eeo-policy-statement.pdf. 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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