Controls Engineer, Power Generation and Microgird

The posting, as OpenAI wrote it

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, program, integrate and commission on-site power generation and microgrid control systems 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.

This role requires hands-on experience with industrial control systems, including PLC and DCS programming, plant-level control sequences, equipment integration, simulation, testing and commissioning. The engineers will work with equipment vendors, system integrators and the broader data center team to make sure the complete power system operates safely and reliably across normal and failure conditions.

Travel: 50%

Key Responsibilities

• Power Generation and Microgrid Controls
• Design, program and commission plant power controllers (PPCs) and microgrid control systems for gas turbine and reciprocating engine power plants.
• Develop control sequences for grid-connected, islanded and transition modes, including startup, shutdown, synchronization, load sharing, import/export control, load shedding, black start, restoration and resynchronization.
• Coordinate active power, reactive power, voltage and frequency controls across generators, energy storage, MV UPS and other distributed energy resources.
• Define how the plant responds to generator trips, loss of utility power, large load changes, equipment failures and loss of communication.
• Work with OEMs to define the boundaries between turbine or engine controls, generator controls, the PPC, protection systems and data center controls.
• Electrical systems and utility interconnection
• Review utility and transmission-provider interconnection requirements and translate them into plant control, protection, metering, communications and testing requirements.
• Work with utility and equipment vendors to define controls and interfaces at the point of interconnection, including power limits, voltage and frequency response, reactive, power factor, telemetry and dispatch.
• Review interconnection studies, operating procedures and test requirements, and track the actions needed to demonstrate compliance.
• Work with Engineer-Of-Record (EOR

[…]
please see OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement https://cdn.openai.com/policies/eeo-policy-statement.pdf.

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.

To notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant, please submit a report through this form https://form.asana.com/?d=57018692298241&k=5MqR40fZd7jlxVUh5J-UeA. No response will be provided to inquiries unrelated to job posting compliance.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link https://form.asana.com/?k=bQ7w9h3iexRlicUdWRiwvg&d=57018692298241.

OpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy https://cdn.openai.com/policies/global-employee-and-contractor-privacy-policy.pdf

At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.