Clean Energy and New Technology Lead

Compensation

The Clean Energy and New Technology Lead position offers a salary range of $228K – $285K, along with equity.

Benefits

The benefits package includes:

• 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.

About the Team

OpenAI's Industrial Compute team is central to the company's mission, setting the core infra strategy and implementing this vision. The team works at the intersection of commercial, technical, strategy, and operations.

About the Role

The Clean Energy and New Technology Lead will own infrastructure clean energy and emerging energy technology strategy and execution, identifying and deploying scalable solutions that enable resilient, low-carbon compute and data center growth. The role will work closely with regulatory and policy teams to align infrastructure expansion with OpenAI's long-term environmental and operational objectives.

Key Responsibilities

• Evaluate emerging energy solutions such as clean firm power, advanced storage, grid flexibility, low-carbon backup power, heat reuse, water-related energy efficiency, and other scalable technologies where relevant.
• Identify pilot opportunities and deployment pathways that can move promising energy technologies from concept to commercially and operationally credible execution.
• Translate technical options into clear reliability, cost, schedule, carbon, regulatory, and operational implications for infrastructure decision-making.
• Partner with energy regulatory, policy, procurement, engineering, deployment, finance, legal, and site-readiness teams to align technology and sustainability choices with project needs.
• Coordinate with OpenAI's central sustainability function as it develops to ensure infrastructure-specific goals, metrics, reporting, and commitments remain consistent.
• Track external market, policy, utility, and technology developments that could affect OpenAI's ability to scale resilient, low-carbon infrastructure.
• Build repeatable evaluation frameworks, partner criteria, and execution playbooks for sustainability and emerging energy technology initiatives.

Qualifications

• 15+ years in energy technology, infrastructure sustainability, clean energy procurement, power markets, data center energy strategy, utility programs, or related roles.
• Strong understanding of power systems, low-carbon energy, grid constraints, infrastructure reliability, and the practical requirements of large-scale deployment.
• Experience evaluating emerging technologies, structuring pilots, or moving early-stage solutions toward commercial implementation.
• Ability to balance sustainability objectives with reliability, cost, schedule, regulatory, and operational constraints.
• Proven cross-functional leadership across technical, commercial, policy, and executive stakeholders.
• Excellent analytical, written communication, and executive-summary skills.