Technical Program Manager, Storage & Data Infrastructure
San Francisco • FullTime
Posted 5d ago
About the job
OpenAI is seeking a technically deep Technical Program Manager to lead programs across data platforms, online databases, and storage infrastructure. This role involves connecting model and product requirements to architecture, and working with engineering teams to bring new capabilities into production. The challenge lies in creating exabyte-scale, workload-ready capacity that is repeatable and scalable, ensuring that data pipelines, database queries, and file operations contribute to product and agent success. This position is based in San Francisco, CA, with a hybrid work model.
Responsibilities
- Translate model, product, and data-platform needs into precise access patterns, consistency, durability, freshness, availability, and scalability requirements.
- Partner with engineering to transform data and storage architecture into repeatable scale units, standardizing provisioning, placement, routing, data movement, and readiness checks.
- Lead cross-stack programs connecting ingestion and processing, databases and indexes, and file/object storage, ensuring data ownership, schema compatibility, and change-data-capture contracts.
- Incorporate cost and efficiency as architectural inputs, evaluating physical vs. logical footprint, index and replication amplification, tiering, caching, and network movement.
- Drive resilience and recovery programs with explicit failure scenarios and validation, distinguishing database recovery from execution/workspace save-and-restore.
- Coordinate lifecycle correctness across files, objects, databases, and data platforms, including metadata, retention, deletion, and snapshots, incorporating privacy and access control.
- Lead adoption and major migrations through compatibility checks, workload testing, staged cutovers, and operational handoff, improving APIs and self-service.
- Measure architecture changes through product and platform outcomes like task completion, data freshness, latency, throughput, reliability, and cost/efficiency to drive improvements.
Requirements
- Independently owned complex production programs in data platforms, databases, or storage infrastructure, with the ability to explain architectural decisions and impact.
- Deep working knowledge of hyperscaler/cloud storage technologies (e.g., Amazon S3, Azure Blob Storage), including performance, placement, resiliency, and cost constraints.
- Understanding of the full data and storage stack: product access patterns and APIs; ingestion and processing; databases, storage engines, and indexes; caching, replication, and data movement; and the underlying durable storage, CPU, and network layers.
- Ability to translate model, product, and data-consumer needs into precise platform requirements, challenge assumptions, and define evidence for capability readiness.
- Experience leading delivery across product, model, data, database, storage, and infrastructure teams, especially in end-to-end ownership scenarios.
- Ability to use workload evidence to make tradeoffs across capability, correctness, reliability, latency, and cost/efficiency, and build mechanisms to improve decisions.
- Clear communication of complex decisions and maintaining ownership through production adoption.
Benefits
- Hybrid work model (3 days in office per week)
- Relocation assistance for new employees