Data Center Security Technical Lead

Job Description:

We are seeking a highly experienced and strategic cybersecurity leader to join our team to lead our data center security efforts. This person will drive the overall vision and execution of cyber defense and security architecture efforts for OpenAI’s rapidly expanding datacenter footprint, spanning multiple, diverse environments. You will be directly responsible for leading a multidisciplinary team to ensure the security of these ambitious infrastructure programs, including key projects already in flight.

This role is open to remote employees, or relocation assistance is available to one of our OpenAI offices in San Francisco, Seattle, or New York City.

In this role, you will:

• Spearhead the overall security vision, architecture, execution, and sustained operations to protect data center infrastructure across a global footprint.

• Recruit, mentor, and lead a diverse, distributed, and multidisciplinary team of security professionals across multiple timezones to securely enable mission impact.

• Integrate hardware‑rooted trust, segmented enclaves, side‑channel mitigations, and insider‑risk countermeasures tuned for persistent, well‑resourced adversaries.

• Drive security design reviews, threat modeling, supply‑chain risk assessments, secure provisioning, runtime monitoring, incident response, and structured decommissioning.

• Deeply collaborate with engineering, operations, and security teams to define, implement, enforce, and evolve security best practices, including network segmentation, physical security, identity management, and access control policies.

• Engage with suppliers and partners to evaluate and mitigate risks associated with third-party hardware, firmware, and software dependencies.

• Prepare and deliver executive-level updates on risk posture, compliance, incident status, and program progress.

• Ensure our facilities meet the strictest compliance requirements.

• Continually evolve the security of our data centers alongside advances in cybersecurity controls, adversary activity, and commensurate with increased sophistication and risks of our frontier models.

You might thrive in this role if you have:

• 15+ years in security, including 10+ years leading large-scale infrastructure or datacenter programs with global scope.

• Proven track record protecting hyperscale, colocation, or hybrid environments against sophisticated adversaries, including insider threats and close-access attacks.

• Demonstrated success recruiting, developing, and retaining multidisciplinary security teams across time zones and cultures.

• Deep knowledge of security design and operations, including host-level hardening, network segmentation, IAM/PAM, secure provisioning, firmware and bare-metal security, and governance frameworks.

• Strong familiarity with control frameworks (e.g., NIST, ISO 27001, SOC 2) and experience driving compliance in regulated environments.