White Space Manager

About the TeamOpenAI, in close collaboration with our capital and delivery partners, is building the infrastructure required to support frontier AI systems. The Data Center Engineering team defines repeatable technical standards and carries them through design, construction, commissioning, and operational readiness. The team works across data center facilities, power generation, compute infrastructure, construction, procurement, and operations to deliver reliable capacity at unprecedented scale and speed.

About the Role

We are seeking a White Space Manager to own the planning, coordination, and readiness of data center white-space environments. You will connect facility delivery with compute deployment by coordinating rack layouts, electrical distribution, liquid and air cooling, structured cabling, containment, material flow, installation sequencing, and acceptance. This role is accountable for turning completed building infrastructure into safe, usable, operations-ready data halls that can receive and activate high-density AI systems.

Role focus: Data hall fit-out, rack deployment, and operational readiness

Travel: 50%

Responsibilities

• Own white-space planning and readiness from design development through rack installation, testing, activation, and handoff to operations.

• Coordinate rack elevations, floor layouts, service clearances, containment, busway or RPP distribution, cabling pathways, and cooling connections.

• Translate compute deployment forecasts into space, power, cooling, network, labor, tooling, and material requirements.

• Develop installation sequences, readiness gates, turnover criteria, punch-list processes, and escalation paths across multiple workstreams.

• Partner with design, construction, commissioning, networking, hardware operations, safety, logistics, and vendors to resolve cross-system constraints.

• Verify field conditions against approved designs and maintain accurate as-built, capacity, asset, and readiness records.

• Identify risks to safe installation, energization, cooling availability, network readiness, or schedule and drive mitigations to closure.

• Create repeatable white-space standards, checklists, metrics, and operating mechanisms that scale across campuses.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience delivering or operating data center white space, critical facilities, compute deployments, or mission-critical fit-outs.

• Strong understanding of racks, power distribution, structured cabling, airflow management, liquid cooling, controls interfaces, and deployment sequencing.

• Demonstrated ownership of installation readiness, field coordination, quality, safety, and handoff across several technical disciplines.

• Experience interpreting construction documents, rack layouts, one-lines, mechanical diagrams, schedules, and commissioning records.

• Ability to manage competing dependencies and make sound decisions in an active construction or production environment.

• Strong communication with engineers, contractors, vendors, deployment teams, and operations leaders.

• Willingness to travel regularly and spend sustained time at active project sites.

Preferred Skills

• Experience with high-density GPU or AI infrastructure and direct-to-chip liquid cooling.

• Experience with DCIM, asset-management, commissioning, or deployment-readiness systems.

• Background in data center construction, commissioning, hardware deployment, or facilities operations.

• Bachelor's degree in engineering, construction management, operations, or a related technical field.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mis...