Engineering Manager, Infrastructure
OpenAI
Location
San Francisco
Employment Type
Full time
Department
Applied AI
Compensation
- $325K – $405K • Offers Equity
The base pay offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factors, including market location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. If the role is non-exempt, overtime pay will be provided consistent with applicable laws. In addition to the salary range listed above, total compensation also includes generous equity, performance-related bonus(es) for eligible employees, and the following benefits.
Medical, dental, and vision insurance for you and your family, with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts
Pre-tax accounts for Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and commuter expenses (parking and transit)
401(k) retirement plan with employer match
Paid parental leave (up to 24 weeks for birth parents and 20 weeks for non-birthing parents), plus paid medical and caregiver leave (up to 8 weeks)
Paid time off: flexible PTO for exempt employees and up to 15 days annually for non-exempt employees
13+ paid company holidays, and multiple paid coordinated company office closures throughout the year for focus and recharge, plus paid sick or safe time (1 hour per 30 hours worked, or more, as required by applicable state or local law)
Mental health and wellness support
Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage
Annual learning and development stipend to fuel your professional growth
Daily meals in our offices, and meal delivery credits as eligible
Relocation support for eligible employees
Additional taxable fringe benefits, such as charitable donation matching and wellness stipends, may also be provided.
More details about our benefits are available to candidates during the hiring process.
This role is at-will and OpenAI reserves the right to modify base pay and other compensation components at any time based on individual performance, team or company results, or market conditions.
About the Team:
The Cloud Infrastructure Automation team designs, builds, and operates the systems that power OpenAI’s global AI platforms. We manage Kubernetes clusters at massive scale, global networking and load balancing, service mesh deployments, and infrastructure automation that keeps our services fast, reliable, and secure.
Our mission is to enable OpenAI to deliver products like ChatGPT, DALL·E, and our APIs (GPT-5, GPT-4o, embeddings, fine-tuning) to millions of developers and users worldwide — safely, efficiently, and at scale.
We’re seeking an experienced and forward-thinking engineering leader to scale our Cloud Infrastructure Automation function. You’ll be responsible for Kubernetes operations at global scale, high-performance networking, global load balancing, and the automation systems that tie it all together
In this role, you will:
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Be hands-on in shaping technical direction, team structure, and execution:
Build and lead a high-performing, diverse engineering team (including ICs and managers) focused on automation, Kubernetes, networking, and global traffic routing.
Set and own core infrastructure KPIs/SLOs (availability, latency, scalability) and continuously improve them.
Architect and scale multi-region Kubernetes clusters, global load balancing, and service mesh deployments.
Automate everything — from provisioning to upgrades to failover — using Terraform, CI/CD, and custom tooling.
Strengthen reliability and security, including network hardening, traffic shaping, and proactive incident prevention.
Partner with research and product teams to streamline the interface between experimental workloads and production deployments.
Coach and grow engineers and managers, fostering technical excellence and leadership depth.
Champion a healthy culture of inclusion, transparency, and high-trust collaboration.
You might thrive in this role if you:
Have 5+ years in engineering leadership, including managing managers and distributed teams.
Bring deep experience in Kubernetes at scale, networking (L4/L7), service mesh (e.g., Istio, Envoy), and cloud-native automation.
Have designed and operated global load balancing and traffic routing at internet scale.
Are fluent in infrastructure-as-code, modern CI/CD, and large-scale system observability.
Can dive deep technically while also operating at the strategic, organizational level.
Have a track record of recruiting and retaining top engineering talent in a competitive market.
Excel in environments with high ambiguity and rapid change, bringing clarity and execution focus.
Care deeply about security, reliability, and operational excellence as first-class priorities.
Technical Environment
Our stack includes:
Kubernetes across dozens of clusters and multiple regions
Service mesh (Istio, Envoy) for secure, observable, and resilient traffic routing
Global networking & load balancing via Cloudflare and cloud provider primitives
Infrastructure automation using Terraform and internal tooling
Observability pipelines with Prometheus, Grafana, and distributed tracing
Datastores including Postgres, Cosmos DB, and Kafka
Location:
This role is based in San Francisco. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.
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.
Compensation Range: $325K - $405K