OpenAI

Rack Power Engineer

OpenAI$150K — $180K *
Technical Services
8 - 10 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 10+ years of experience in power electronics or power delivery systems.
  • Master's degree in Electrical Engineering, Power Electronics, or related field, or equivalent experience.
  • Strong knowledge of AC/DC rectifiers, power shelves, PSUs, and DC distribution.
  • Experience with power management controllers (PMCs) and related interfaces like PMBus, I²C, or CAN.
  • Proficient in laboratory debugging and using testing equipment like oscilloscopes and power analyzers.
  • Experience taking power products through requirements, qualification, and production phases.

Responsibilities

  • Own rack power architecture and requirements for AI supercomputing systems.
  • Drive design and supplier development of power components and protective circuits.
  • Define and execute qualification plans for components and systems under various conditions.
  • Collaborate with firmware teams to validate power management functionality and interfaces.
  • Characterize rack power performance under AI workloads and assess deployment requirements.
  • Establish power health metrics and analyze telemetry data for performance trends.
  • Lead debugging efforts and identify root causes of power-related issues across hardware and firmware.

Benefits

  • Hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week.
  • Relocation assistance for new employees.
Full Job Description
About the Role

We're looking for a Rack Power Engineer with deep expertise in high-power conversion and distribution to design, qualify, and support power systems for AI supercomputers. You will own rack power solutions-including power shelves, AC/DC rectifiers, power supply units (PSUs), power management controllers (PMCs), and high-current distribution-from requirements and supplier development through deployment. You will also monitor fleet rack power health, lead debugging and root-cause investigations, and drive improvements into hardware, firmware, and qualification coverage.

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.

In this role, you will:
  • Own rack power architecture and requirements for high-power AI supercomputing systems, including power budgets, AC input interfaces, DC distribution, redundancy, efficiency, serviceability, and integration with data center infrastructure.
  • Drive the design and supplier development of power shelves, rectifiers, PSUs, PMCs, busbars, connectors, and protection circuits. Review electrical designs and control behavior, and evaluate performance, cost, reliability, and availability trade-offs.
  • Define and execute component, shelf, and rack qualification plans covering load transients, current sharing, hot-swap, startup and shutdown, redundancy failover, fault protection and recovery, thermal limits, and AC disturbances and ride-through.
  • Partner with firmware and software teams to define and validate PMC functionality, telemetry, alarms, power sequencing, power capping, and fault handling. Verify communication interfaces, firmware updates, interoperability, and regression coverage.
  • Characterize rack power under representative AI workloads. Translate steady-state demand and fast power excursions into design margins, protection settings, energy-storage needs, and deployment requirements with system and data center teams.
  • Establish fleet rack power health metrics with operations teams. Analyze telemetry, event logs, and failure trends to detect degraded power capacity, redundancy loss, current imbalance, and recurring power faults.
  • Lead lab and fleet debugging across power hardware, firmware, and system interfaces. Reproduce failures, identify root causes with suppliers, validate corrective actions, and feed lessons into designs, qualification tests, and fleet remediation.
  • Work with electrical, mechanical, thermal, firmware, manufacturing, reliability, and data center teams to take rack power systems through prototype builds, qualification, production, and deployment. Drive supplier test reviews, manufacturing test coverage, and closure of power-related issues.
  • Evaluate emerging rack power technologies, including higher-voltage DC distribution and battery or supercapacitor energy storage. Partner with suppliers to qualify viable solutions and with safety and compliance teams to address applicable product requirements.

You might thrive in this role if you:
  • Have at least 10 years of industry experience in power electronics or power delivery systems, including hands-on design and qualification of high-power rack or data center power systems.
  • Have a master's degree in Electrical Engineering, Power Electronics, a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
  • Have strong knowledge of AC/DC rectifiers, power shelves, PSUs, and DC distribution, including three-phase inputs, power conversion topologies, control-loop stability, current sharing, redundancy, protection coordination, and high-current busbars and connectors.
  • Have experience defining and qualifying PMCs or related power controllers, including telemetry, fault management, hardware-firmware integration, and interfaces such as PMBus, I²C, CAN, or Ethernet. Understand how rack power controls interact with system power management.
  • Have strong laboratory and debugging skills using oscilloscopes, power analyzers, programmable AC sources, electronic loads, and data acquisition systems. Can build automated tests, analyze fleet telemetry with tools such as Python, and drive root-cause investigations through verified corrective actions.
  • Have taken power products from requirements through qualification and production with suppliers and cross-functional teams. Bring familiarity with safety, EMC, and reliability qualification; communicate technical trade-offs clearly; and work effectively through ambiguity. Experience with high-density AI racks, OCP power architectures, or energy-storage systems is a plus.


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.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an artificial intelligence research laboratory consisting of the for-profit corporation OpenAI LP and its parent company, the non-profit OpenAI Inc. The company was founded in 2015 by a group of technology leaders, including Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, and John Schulman. OpenAI's mission is to develop and promote friendly AI for the betterment of humanity. The company has developed a number of cutting-edge AI technologies, including GPT-3, a language processing system that can generate human-like text. OpenAI has received funding from a number of high-profile investors, including LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and venture capitalist Peter Thiel.
Learn more about OpenAI
Size
100 employees
Industry
Founded
2015

Similar Jobs

More Jobs at OpenAI

More Technical Services Jobs

Find similar Rack Power Engineer jobs: