Strategic Sourcing Manager, High Speed Interconnects · OpenAI

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 18:31:35 GMT
Engineering

OpenAI · San Francisco · $226K – $378K · hybrid

Location

San Francisco

Employment Type

Full time

Department

Scaling

Compensation

$226K – $378K • 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 Hardware Strategic Sourcing & Partnerships organization is responsible for the global supply of compute infrastructure powering OpenAI’s model training and inference. We lead strategy, supplier engagements, commercial architecture, execution, and long-term enablement across advanced systems including custom silicon, accelerators, CPU platforms, networking, memory, power delivery, cooling, and full rack solutions.

We are a small, high-impact team working across engineering, operations, finance, legal, and executive leadership to scale OpenAI’s fleet worldwide.

About the Role

We are seeking a Sr. Strategic Sourcing Manager to own and lead sourcing strategy and global supplier partnerships for the High Speed Interconnects (e.g., power systems, high-speed interconnect, memory subsystems, networking modules, mechanical enclosures, thermal systems, etc.). You will be the single-threaded leader across supplier strategy, selection, negotiations, and commercial/operational execution.

You will be accountable for enabling massive growth, reducing long-term cost curves, securing supply resilience, and aligning supplier technology roadmaps with OpenAI’s future system architecture needs.

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.

Key Responsibilities

1. Own the category end-to-end: strategy, business case, supplier selection, executive alignment, and operational enablement

1. Lead complex commercial negotiations including MSAs, NRE, cost models, open-book pricing, ramp/capacity commitments, and risk-buy frameworks

1. Build and scale a reliable global supply base with redundancy and geopolitical compliance, including mapping and influencing sub-tier suppliers to ensure resilience across the extended supply chain.

1. Translate engineering requirements into actionable sourcing plans with tier-1 manufacturing partners

1. Drive cost benchmarking and teardown insights to shape long-term cost-down strategies

1. Maintain tight alignment with Operations, Capacity Planning, Finance, and Program Management to ensure supply readiness against growth milestones

1. Build executive-level relationships with suppliers to ensure priority allocation and roadmap synchronization

1. Define scalable sourcing processes and dashboards for risk, cost, and performance transparency

1. Mentor and uplift sourcing peers by role-modeling strong cross-functional leadership and commercial excellence

Qualifications

8+ years of strategic sourcing or supplier management experience in advanced electronics, cloud infrastructure, telecom, or semiconductor supply chains

Demonstrated success owning a category and supplier portfolio at scale (supply assurance, commercial strategy, cost roadmap), including leading complex negotiations

Strong understanding of electronic and module-level cost drivers (e.g., power, PCBAs, connectors, cooling, memory, networking)

Proven ability to influence and partner with Engineering, Program Management, Legal, and Finance at senior levels

Executive presence and ability to communicate clearly in high-stakes supplier and leadership forums

Comfort with fast-paced ambiguity and decisive decision-making in compressed timelines

Preferred Qualifications

Experience in hyperscale datacenter supply chain environments

Familiarity with export controls and high-risk country strategies

Technical background in \[mechanical/electrical engineering, high-speed IO, thermal systems, or rack-scale architecture\]

Experience building sourcing playbooks, processes, and scalable operational mechanisms

_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