Hardware Strategic Sourcing & Manufacturing Partnerships Manager

About the Team

OpenAI’s Hardware organization develops silicon and system-level solutions designed for advanced AI workloads. The team builds next-generation AI-native silicon and systems, working closely with software, research, and manufacturing partners to co-design hardware tightly integrated with AI models. Beyond delivering systems for OpenAI’s supercomputing infrastructure, the team develops the strategic partnerships needed to accelerate hardware innovation and scale.

About the Role

We’re seeking an experienced Hardware Strategic Sourcing & Manufacturing Partnerships Manager to lead strategic engagements with joint design manufacturers (JDMs), contract manufacturers (CMs), and original design manufacturers (ODMs) across OpenAI’s hardware ecosystem.

Based in Singapore, you will own the complete manufacturing partner lifecycle: developing sourcing strategies, leading RFIs and RFPs, evaluating and selecting JDM, CM, and ODM partners, negotiating commercial agreements, onboarding suppliers, launching manufacturing programs, and managing long-term partnerships.

You will work closely with engineering, manufacturing, supply chain, finance, legal, security, and program management teams to establish partnerships supporting AI-native silicon, rack-scale systems, and related infrastructure. Success requires strong commercial judgment, technical credibility, and hands-on operational execution.

In this role, you will:

• Develop and execute partnership strategies across JDM, CM, and ODM engagement models, identifying the appropriate manufacturing approach based on product requirements, technical complexity, scale, speed, cost, and risk.

• Lead end-to-end RFI and RFP processes for prospective JDM, CM, and ODM partners, including defining requirements, conducting market outreach, managing competitive bids, coordinating stakeholder evaluations, and presenting selection recommendations.

• Evaluate manufacturing partners across technical capabilities, product design and engineering resources, manufacturing readiness, quality systems, production capacity, financial stability, security, supply-chain resilience, commercial competitiveness, and strategic alignment.

• Negotiate and structure JDM, CM, and ODM agreements, including master services agreements, statements of work, engineering and manufacturing responsibilities, nonrecurring engineering, tooling, pricing, capacity commitments, intellectual property, warranties, service levels, and program-specific terms.

• Establish clear commercial and operational ownership across partner models, including design responsibilities, engineering deliverables, manufacturing execution, quality accountability, inventory exposure, supply commitments, and escalation procedures.

• Develop transparent cost and pricing structures covering bills of materials, engineering services, tooling, manufacturing labor, overhead, margin, volume assumptions, and total cost of ownership.

• Apply should-cost analysis, open-book pricing, benchmarking, and cost-down planning to evaluate partner proposals and improve long-term manufacturing economics.

• Lead partner onboarding and program bring-up, translating executed agreements into operating plans, resource commitments, technical readiness requirements, program milestones, governance structures, and cross-functional execution.

• Coordinate manufacturing readiness, new product introduction, design transfer, production ramp, and ongoing operations with engineering, manufacturing, supply chain, quality, finance, and program management teams.

• Build and maintain strong executive and working-level relationships with JDM, CM, and ODM partners, serving as the primary commercial point of contact throughout each partnership.

• Establish ongoing partner governance through performance scorecards, executive business reviews, delivery and capacity forecasts, corrective action plans, issue escalation, and continuous-improvement initiatives.

• Identify and mitigate risks related to manufacturing capacity, supplier concentration, quality, delivery, geopolitical exposure, and continuity across the partner ecosystem.

• Develop repeatable frameworks for partner selection, contracting, onboarding, and performance management, while supporting relevant ERP, MRP, and PLM system requirements.

You might thrive in this role if you have:

• Ten or more years of experience in strategic sourcing, manufacturing partnerships, supplier management, procurement, or supply-chain leadership within hardware, semiconductors, advanced manufacturing, or technology infrastructure.

• Direct experience selecting, negotiating with, and managing JDM, CM, and ODM partners supporting complex hardware programs.

• A demonstrated understanding of differences among JDM, CM, and ODM business models, including design ownership, engineering responsibilities, manufacturing execution, intellectual property, commercial structures, and operational risk.

• Experience leading partner engagements from RFI or RFP through evaluation, selection, contracting, onboarding, new product introduction, production ramp, and ongoing relationship management.

• Strong negotiation skills and experience structuring agreements covering engineering services, manufacturing, tooling, capacity, pricing, intellectual property, quality, warranties, and delivery commitments.

• Expertise in manufacturing cost models, should-cost analysis, open-book pricing, total cost of ownership, and long-term cost reduction strategies.

• Experience bringing new manufacturing programs online and coordinating technical, commercial, and operational readiness across internal teams and external partners.

• The technical credibility to collaborate with hardware engineering and manufacturing teams on rack-scale systems, compute infrastructure, networking, storage, silicon, or related hardware.

• Strong analytical judgment and the ability to assess tradeoffs among cost, quality, capacity, schedule, technical capability, and operational risk.

• A track record of building trusted relationships with manufacturing partners and cross-functional stakeholders; familiarity with manufacturing ecosystems across Asia is valuable.

• Comfort operating in a fast-moving, ambiguous environment and building scalable processes where established playbooks do not yet exist.

• A commitment to OpenAI’s mission of ensuring that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.

To comply with export control laws and regulations, candidates for this role may need to meet certain legal status requirements as provided in those laws and regulations.

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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