Data Center Shell Planning Lead, Industrial Compute

About the Team

OpenAI, in close collaboration with our capital partners, is building the world’s most advanced AI infrastructure ecosystem. The Site Readiness & Development team is responsible for translating OpenAI’s long-term infrastructure needs into executable data center capacity across self-build campuses, leased facilities, and strategic development partnerships.

The team works across capacity planning, power, land, real estate, design, construction, finance, and commercial execution to ensure the right infrastructure is available in the right locations and on the timelines required to support OpenAI’s growth.

About the Role

We are seeking a Data Center Shell Planning Lead to own portfolio-level planning for future data center shell capacity. This role will translate compute-demand forecasts, power availability, technical requirements, and development schedules into a clear strategy for where, when, and how much shell capacity OpenAI should secure or build.

You will evaluate capacity across self-build, lease, colocation, and development-partner pathways; identify future supply gaps; recommend campus and building phasing; and maintain the integrated plan connecting site readiness to construction, commissioning, and operational handoff.

This is an individual contributor lead role requiring strong analytical judgment, infrastructure-development fluency, and the ability to drive decisions across teams without relying on formal authority.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain a multi-year portfolio plan for data center shell capacity across priority geographies.

• Translate compute forecasts, IT-load requirements, rack-density assumptions, power schedules, cooling requirements, and deployment timelines into site and building requirements.

• Determine when shell capacity must be secured, designed, constructed, commissioned, and ready for technical fit-out.

• Integrate land, utility, interconnection, permitting, design, procurement, construction, commissioning, and network-readiness schedules into a single capacity view.

• Identify capacity gaps, schedule conflicts, stranded-capacity risks, and dependencies that could prevent infrastructure from becoming operational on time.

• Develop scenario models comparing self-build, lease, colocation, and strategic development-partner options.

• Evaluate delivery pathways based on schedule, cost, control, flexibility, reliability, scalability, and execution risk.

• Recommend campus, building, and utility phasing that preserves optionality while supporting near-term deployment requirements.

• Assess third-party proposals and determine whether proposed facilities, schedules, technical specifications, and commercial structures can satisfy OpenAI’s requirements.

• Partner with capacity planning, energy, real estate, site development, design, construction, commissioning, networking, finance, legal, and commercial teams.

• Establish planning assumptions, readiness criteria, decision gates, and governance for moving opportunities from portfolio planning into execution.

• Build dashboards and executive-ready materials that communicate capacity supply, demand, timing, assumptions, dependencies, and material risks.

• Support investment, build-versus-partner, geographic-prioritization, and portfolio-allocation decisions.

• Create repeatable planning frameworks and playbooks that allow OpenAI to scale shell-capacity decisions across regions and infrastructure generations.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in data center development, infrastructure planning, capacity planning, real estate development, construction planning, program controls, or a related field.

• Experience developing or managing portfolio-level plans across multiple data center sites, buildings, or infrastructure programs.

• Strong understanding of the data center development lifecycle, including site readiness, power delivery, design, permitting, construction, commissioning, and operational turnover.

• Ability to translate technical and demand requirements into facility-capacity, schedule, and phasing decisions.

• Strong quantitative and scenario-modeling skills, including the ability to work with incomplete or changing assumptions.

• Experience evaluating competing delivery strategies and communicating cost, schedule, flexibility, and risk tradeoffs.

• Strong cross-functional program leadership and the ability to create alignment across technical, commercial, and operational organizations.

• Excellent written communication and executive-presentation skills.

• Comfort operating in a fast-moving environment where capacity requirements, technical assumptions, and delivery timelines may change quickly.

Preferred Skills

• Experience planning hyperscale data center campuses or infrastructure supporting high-density compute.

• Familiarity with powered-land development, utility and interconnection schedules, and campus-level power phasing.

• Experience evaluating self-build, build-to-suit, wholesale colocation, and third-party development models.

• Understanding of high-density electrical, mechanical, cooling, and network infrastructure requirements.

• Experience working with developers, capital partners, colocation providers, utilities, engineering firms, and construction organizations.

• Experience creating portfolio-planning systems, capacity dashboards, or executive decision frameworks for large infrastructure programs.

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.

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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. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

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