Design Engineer: Power Generation

OpenAI • San Francisco, CA

1d • $257,000 - $327,000

About The Position

OpenAI’s Industrial Compute organization develops and delivers large-scale power, data center, and compute infrastructure for frontier AI systems. The Data Center Engineering team works across energy, electrical, mechanical, controls, site development, construction, commissioning, operations, and external partners to turn campus power requirements into safe, reliable, executable solutions.

The Design Engineer, Power Generation develops and integrates power-generation systems for large-scale AI infrastructure campuses. The role translates campus load, reliability, schedule, and operating requirements into practical generation architectures and technical design criteria, supporting behind-the-meter generation and hybrid grid-and-generation strategies.

This individual-contributor role has broad technical ownership, from early concept and technology evaluation through detailed design, equipment selection, construction support, commissioning, and performance validation. The engineer works with internal teams, utilities, OEMs, EPC partners, developers, and operators to resolve interfaces, make technical tradeoffs, and establish repeatable designs that can scale across the portfolio.

Requirements

• At least 8 years of engineering experience in power generation or industrial power systems, including responsibility for generation facility design or integration.
• A bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Experience taking generation projects from concept and equipment selection through detailed design, with direct involvement in procurement, construction support, commissioning, or performance testing.
• Strong understanding of generation technologies such as gas turbines or reciprocating engines and their supporting electrical, mechanical, and fuel systems, including protection, controls, grid paralleling, islanding, and black start.
• Ability to evaluate engineering studies, drawings, specifications, and supplier proposals; identify technical risks; and make defensible tradeoffs among safety, reliability, cost, schedule, and maintainability.
• Experience resolving design interfaces across engineering disciplines and coordinating equipment suppliers, engineering and construction partners, utilities, and operators.
• Sound judgment regarding safety, reliability, constructibility, maintainability, and technical risk, including the ability to make decisions when requirements or information are incomplete.
• Ability to document design requirements, assumptions, and decisions clearly and explain technical recommendations to engineering, delivery, commercial, and leadership teams.

Nice To Haves

• Professional Engineer licensure and experience developing reusable engineering standards and reference designs across multiple projects.
• Hands-on experience deploying and commissioning onsite generation for campuses or industrial facilities with demand in the hundreds of megawatts or more, including large load steps and rapid power fluctuations.
• Experience co-designing and deploying battery energy storage systems (BESS) with onsite generation, including power and energy sizing, controls integration, load smoothing, and frequency support.
• Familiarity with utility interconnection studies, emissions and environmental constraints, fuel-supply requirements, and generation permitting.
• Experience validating generation and storage performance through dynamic studies and field testing, including load steps, load rejection, generator trips, and transitions between grid-connected and islanded operation.
• Experience delivering phased campus power, including integrating temporary generation, permanent generation, storage, and utility service while maintaining power to operating loads.

Responsibilities

• Develop power-generation concepts, reference architectures, design criteria, and site-specific requirements based on campus demand, phasing, reliability targets, grid availability, fuel strategy, site constraints, and operating objectives.
• Evaluate generation technologies and configurations, including gas turbines, reciprocating engines, fuel cells, battery energy storage, microgrids, black-start systems, and hybrid grid-connected solutions.
• Define and review plant electrical and mechanical balance-of-plant requirements, protection and controls philosophy, grid-paralleling and islanding behavior, redundancy, maintainability, and operational modes.
• Translate AI infrastructure load profiles and deployment schedules into generation capacity plans, equipment sizing, ramp strategies, performance requirements, and commissioning criteria.
• Lead technical diligence of OEM, EPC, developer, and supplier proposals; review calculations, one-line diagrams, layouts, specifications, studies, schedules, and design assumptions to identify gaps and material risks.
• Coordinate interfaces across utility interconnection, substations, campus electrical distribution, cooling systems, controls, fuel supply, emissions, water, civil design, permitting, construction, and operations.
• Evaluate tradeoffs involving availability, efficiency, emissions, cost, schedule, constructibility, scalability, maintainability, and long-term operating flexibility, and document technical recommendations.
• Support equipment selection, procurement, design reviews, factory and site acceptance testing, construction issue resolution, commissioning, performance testing, and operational handoff.
• Investigate design or field-performance issues, drive corrective actions with partners, and incorporate lessons learned into engineering standards, specifications, and future reference designs.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior