Strategic Sourcing Manager, Datacenter Networking - Stargate

About the Team:

OpenAI, in close collaboration with our capital partners, is embarking on a journey to build the world’s most advanced AI infrastructure ecosystem. The industrial compute team is central to this mission, setting the core infra strategy and implementing this vision. From site selection to the buildout process, this team sits at the intersection of commercial, technical, strategy, and operations, interacting with teams and executives inside and outside of OpenAI.

About the Role:

OpenAI is seeking a sourcing leader ready to take on global-scale challenges involving thousands of stakeholders and high-stakes commercial decisions. If you’re motivated by structuring transformative deals and shaping the future of infrastructure on a planetary scale, this is your seat at the table.

The Industrial compute team supporting Stargate OpenAI’s ambitious next-generation supercomputing platform is hiring a seasoned and strategic sourcing professional to lead infrastructure procurement efforts at the cutting edge of AI.

In this role, you will own end-to-end sourcing strategy and execution across datacenter network hardware. You’ll partner closely with engineering and business teams to ensure hardware availability, incubate new vendor relationships, and negotiate complex commercial agreements. This is not just sourcing, it’s foundational work for building the world’s most advanced supercomputer.

You’ll shape supplier engagement, define commercial terms, and drive vendor accountability, all while sitting at the heart of OpenAI’s infrastructure strategy. Your work will directly impact our ability to scale safely, securely, and swiftly.

Key Responsibilities:

• Design and execute strategic roadmaps for the next generation of network infrastructure, including long-haul fiber, in-building networking, and optical transport solutions, in close partnership with engineering.

• Stay current on industry trends and leverage insights to shape forward-looking, category-specific sourcing strategies.

• Initiate, negotiate, and manage contracts for critical datacenter domains, including but not limited to network switches, routers, DWDM/RLS transport solutions, optics, cabling, and rack hardware.

• Identify risks and secure optionality for hardware availability across a broad portfolio spanning backbone and networking components.

• Partner cross-functionally with engineering, operations, legal, and finance to ensure sourcing strategies align with broader project and organizational goals.

• Develop and lead competitive commercial strategies, ensuring material readiness and cost efficiency across OpenAI’s infrastructure roadmap.

• Provide technical and commercial input during vendor evaluation and selection to ensure alignment with data center operational and design standards.

• Communicate sourcing progress, risks, and key milestones to executive stakeholders with clarity and precision.

Minimum Qualifications:

• 10+ years of strategic sourcing, procurement, and contract management experience, with deep specialization in data center infrastructure and operations, including leadership of sourcing for major capital equipment and facilities.

• Demonstrated success in contract negotiation and vendor management for large-scale data center environments, working with OEMs, JDMs, and global suppliers, with an emphasis on commercial structuring and international logistics.

• Deep technical fluency in networks (e.g., DWDMs, switches, routers, cabling, NICs), optical transport, and end-to-end connectivity solutions.

• Robust knowledge of network hardware and compute platform infrastructure, aligned with industry best practices and standards across network and compute domains.

• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with a sharp focus on cost optimization, risk mitigation, and long-term value delivery.

• Skilled in structuring complex, multi-equipment capital deals, negotiating commercial terms, and driving vendor performance and accountability.

• Track record of cross-functional leadership, influencing internal and external executive stakeholders to steer major capital project decisions.

• Expertise in balancing technical, operational, and financial trade-offs in high-cost, high-impact environments, including defining payment milestones and contract levers.

• Hands-on experience with supply chain readiness, manufacturing processes, and material coordination for large-scale infrastructure projects.

• Advanced certifications in procurement, project management, or data center operations are preferred and considered a strong asset.

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.

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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