PCBA Manufacturing Engineer

About the Team

OpenAI's Industrial Compute organization is building the world's most advanced AI infrastructure ecosystem. We work closely with hardware design teams, manufacturing partners, suppliers, and data center operations to deliver the compute platforms that power frontier AI.

The Manufacturing Engineering team ensures our hardware can be built, tested, deployed, and supported at hyperscale. We bridge Hardware Engineering, Quality, Supply Chain, Contract Manufacturers, and Hardware Operations to continuously improve manufacturing performance throughout the product lifecycle.

As our fleet grows globally, sustaining manufacturing engineering becomes increasingly important to maintain product quality, improve manufacturability, and rapidly resolve production issues.

About the Role

We are seeking a PCBA Manufacturing Engineer (Sustaining) to support production and continuous improvement of printed circuit board assemblies (PCBAs) used throughout Industrial Compute hardware platforms.

This role focuses on sustaining engineering after product launch. You'll partner closely with Hardware Design, Quality, Manufacturing, Test Engineering, Supply Chain, and our contract manufacturers to resolve production issues, improve manufacturing yield, reduce failures, implement engineering changes, and ensure stable high-volume manufacturing.

The ideal candidate has experience supporting complex server, networking, accelerator, storage, or high-performance electronics manufacturing environments.

Key Responsibilities

• Own sustaining manufacturing engineering for PCBA production across multiple hardware platforms.

• Drive root cause investigations for manufacturing defects, field failures, and production escapes.

• Partner with Hardware Design Engineers to improve manufacturability (DFM/DFA/DFT).

• Support engineering change orders (ECOs) and manufacturing change implementation.

• Work directly with contract manufacturers to improve production yield, cycle time, and quality.

• Analyze manufacturing data to identify recurring process issues and improvement opportunities.

• Develop corrective and preventive actions (CAPA) for manufacturing and supplier quality issues.

• Support failure analysis activities including electrical, functional, and process investigations.

• Improve manufacturing documentation, work instructions, assembly processes, and test procedures.

• Collaborate with Test Engineering to improve production test coverage and manufacturing diagnostics.

• Support supplier qualification, process validation, and manufacturing readiness for design revisions.

• Travel to manufacturing partners as needed to support production and issue resolution.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Manufacturing Engineering, or related field.

• 5+ years supporting high-volume PCBA manufacturing.

• Experience with SMT manufacturing, PCB fabrication, and electronic assembly processes.

• Strong understanding of manufacturing process control, yield improvement, and statistical analysis.

• Experience performing root cause analysis using methodologies such as 8D, 5 Why, Fishbone, or FMEA.

• Experience working with contract manufacturers and global supply chains.

• Ability to interpret schematics, BOMs, assembly drawings, and manufacturing documentation.

• Excellent cross-functional communication and project management skills.

Preferred Skills

• Experience with server, accelerator, networking, storage, or AI hardware platforms.

• Familiarity with ICT, Flying Probe, Boundary Scan, Functional Test, and System-Level Test.

• Experience supporting high-speed PCBAs involving GPUs, CPUs, memory, PCIe, Ethernet, or high-speed interconnects.

• Knowledge of IPC standards (IPC-A-610, IPC-6012, IPC-7711/7721).

• Experience with manufacturing execution systems (MES), PLM systems, and engineering change management.

• Enjoy solving complex manufacturing problems using...