Commissioning Project Lead, Data Center Delivery

About the Team OpenAI’s Industrial Compute organization is building the infrastructure required to support the next generation of frontier AI systems. Through a combination of strategic partnerships and self-built data center campuses, we are scaling the power, cooling, electrical, mechanical, and controls infrastructure needed to deliver compute at unprecedented scale. The Commissioning organization is responsible for ensuring this infrastructure is safely tested, validated, integrated, and transitioned into reliable operations. For our self-build campuses, the team operates through a hybrid delivery model: OpenAI provides commissioning leadership, discipline ownership, governance, and project integration, while commissioning partners provide field and test engineering capacity to support inspections, startup, testing, and turnover. About the Role We are seeking a Commissioning Project Lead to own the commissioning strategy and execution for a large-scale, self-build data center project. You will lead the overall commissioning program from early construction planning through startup, functional testing, integrated systems testing, and final turnover. You will establish the commissioning execution plan, integrate commissioning activities into the master project schedule, coordinate multidisciplinary readiness, and lead the vendor commissioning partners providing field and test engineering capacity. This role serves as the primary commissioning interface to project leadership, construction management, contractors, equipment vendors, operations, and commissioning partners. You will be responsible for creating clarity across organizations, identifying readiness and schedule risks early, and ensuring the facility progresses through testing and turnover against clearly defined acceptance criteria. The role will initially support planning and coordination in a hybrid capacity and transition to full-time onsite presence as construction, inspections, startup, testing, and turnover become active. Key Responsibilities - Own the project commissioning strategy and execution plan, including scope, governance, acceptance criteria, responsibilities, sequencing, and escalation paths. - Lead the hybrid OpenAI and commissioning-partner delivery model, establishing clear RACI ownership, staffing requirements, performance expectations, and issue-management processes. - Integrate commissioning into the master project schedule, including construction readiness, energization, equipment startup, functional testing, integrated systems testing, and turnover milestones. - Lead commissioning coordination across construction management, contractors, design teams, equipment vendors, operations stakeholders, and field/test engineering teams. - Drive multidisciplinary commissioning readiness across electrical, mechanical, controls, and supporting infrastructure, identifying dependencies and resolving blockers before they affect testing. - Own visibility into commissioning risks, including schedule constraints, readiness gaps, design and submittal issues, safety constraints, resource bottlenecks, deficiencies, and documentation quality. - Coordinate QA/QC inspections and test execution with discipline commissioning leads, contractors, equipment vendors, and commissioning partners. - Review commissioning plans, test procedures, readiness checklists, deficiency logs, test reports, turnover packages, and other commissioning deliverables against established acceptance criteria. - Provide clear project and executive reporting on commissioning readiness, staffing, test progress, open risks, issue aging, and turnover status. - Drive final system acceptance, turnover readiness, closeout, and lessons learned to support a reliable transition from construction into operations. Qualifications - 10+ years of experience in commissioning, construction, engineering, technical program management, or project delivery for mission-critical facilities or similarly complex technical infrastructure. - Demonstrated experience leading multidisciplinary commissioning programs through construction readiness, startup, functional performance testing, integrated systems testing, and turnover. - Strong working knowledge of electrical and mechanical commissioning workflows, with the ability to coordinate dependencies across power, cooling, controls, and supporting systems. - Experience integrating commissioning activities into construction schedules, lookaheads, energization plans, equipment startup sequences, and turnover milestones. - Strong owner, contractor, equipment vendor, and commissioning-agent management skills, including the ability to drive accountability across organizations without direct authority. - Experience managing commissioning documentation, test procedures, deficiency resolution, issue tracking, acceptance criteria, and quality governance. - Ability to identify commissioning and operational-readiness risks early and translate technical issues into actionable schedule and project decisions. - Strong written and verbal communication skills, including experience communicating technical readiness, risk, and recovery plans to senior project leadership. - Owner-side commissioning experience and experience establishing or scaling hybrid owner/vendor commissioning delivery models are strongly preferred. - Professional credentials such as a PE license, QCxP, CxA, BCxP, CCP, PMP, or other relevant commissioning, engineering, construction, or project management certification are preferred. Location This role will support one of OpenAI’s self-build data center campuses in the Savannah, Georgia metro area or Abilene, Texas area. The initial planning and ramp period may operate in a hybrid capacity, with the role transitioning to full-time onsite presence as the project enters active construction, startup, testing, and commissioning. Travel to project sites, vendor facilities, and other locations may be required based on project needs. 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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