Controls Engineer, Power Generation

About the Team

OpenAI, 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 Controls Engineer to design and integrate automation systems for on-site power generation serving large AI data center campuses. You will own control architecture and functional requirements across generation packages, balance-of-plant systems, electrical protection, microgrid controls, and data center monitoring. You will work from concept through factory testing, site commissioning, performance validation, and operational improvement.

Travel: 50%

Responsibilities

• Define control-system architecture, functional design specifications, sequences of operation, cause-and-effect matrices, alarm philosophy, and interface requirements.

• Integrate OEM controls, PLCs, DCS, SCADA, historian, microgrid controllers, protection systems, and data center BMS or EPMS platforms.

• Develop and review I/O lists, network architecture, control narratives, graphics, alarm limits, interlocks, permissives, and fail-safe behavior.

• Coordinate synchronization, load sharing, islanding, black start, load shedding, restoration, and generation-to-data-center operating modes.

• Evaluate cybersecurity, redundancy, time synchronization, communications protocols, data quality, and remote-support requirements.

• Lead or support software reviews, simulator testing, factory acceptance testing, site acceptance testing, commissioning, and tuning.

• Troubleshoot control-system and plant-performance issues and convert findings into corrective actions and reusable standards.

• Partner with electrical, mechanical, CSA, IT, security, operations, OEM, EPC, and data center controls teams.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of controls, automation, or instrumentation engineering experience in power generation, industrial plants, utilities, or mission-critical infrastructure.

• Strong experience with PLC, DCS, SCADA, historian, industrial-networking, and control-system integration.

• Knowledge of generation controls, synchronization, load sharing, protective interfaces, process control, and safety interlocks.

• Experience developing functional specifications, sequences, I/O, alarms, graphics, and factory or site test procedures.

• Ability to troubleshoot across software, instrumentation, electrical, mechanical, communications, and operating-process boundaries.

• Understanding of industrial cybersecurity, redundancy, failover, and change-control practices.

• Bachelor's degree in controls, electrical, mechanical, chemical engineering, computer engineering, or a related field.

Preferred Skills

• Experience with major turbine or reciprocating-engine control platforms and microgrid controllers.

• Experience with IEC 61850, Modbus, OPC UA, DNP3, EtherNet/IP, or comparable industrial protocols.

• Experience integrating generation controls with BMS, EPMS, DCIM, or utility systems.

• Professional Engineer license, functional-safety training, or industrial-cybersecurity certification.

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 mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity. 

We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.

Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

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