PCBA Manufacturing Engineer

About the Team

OpenAI's Industrial Compute organization is building the world's most advanced AI infrastructure ecosystem. We work closely with hardware design teams, manufacturing partners, suppliers, and data center operations to deliver the compute platforms that power frontier AI.

The Manufacturing Engineering team ensures our hardware can be built, tested, deployed, and supported at hyperscale. We bridge Hardware Engineering, Quality, Supply Chain, Contract Manufacturers, and Hardware Operations to continuously improve manufacturing performance throughout the product lifecycle.

As our fleet grows globally, sustaining manufacturing engineering becomes increasingly important to maintain product quality, improve manufacturability, and rapidly resolve production issues.

About the Role

We are seeking a PCBA Manufacturing Engineer (Sustaining) to support production and continuous improvement of printed circuit board assemblies (PCBAs) used throughout Industrial Compute hardware platforms.

This role focuses on sustaining engineering after product launch. You'll partner closely with Hardware Design, Quality, Manufacturing, Test Engineering, Supply Chain, and our contract manufacturers to resolve production issues, improve manufacturing yield, reduce failures, implement engineering changes, and ensure stable high-volume manufacturing.

The ideal candidate has experience supporting complex server, networking, accelerator, storage, or high-performance electronics manufacturing environments.

Key Responsibilities

• Own sustaining manufacturing engineering for PCBA production across multiple hardware platforms.

• Drive root cause investigations for manufacturing defects, field failures, and production escapes.

• Partner with Hardware Design Engineers to improve manufacturability (DFM/DFA/DFT).

• Support engineering change orders (ECOs) and manufacturing change implementation.

• Work directly with contract manufacturers to improve production yield, cycle time, and quality.

• Analyze manufacturing data to identify recurring process issues and improvement opportunities.

• Develop corrective and preventive actions (CAPA) for manufacturing and supplier quality issues.

• Support failure analysis activities including electrical, functional, and process investigations.

• Improve manufacturing documentation, work instructions, assembly processes, and test procedures.

• Collaborate with Test Engineering to improve production test coverage and manufacturing diagnostics.

• Support supplier qualification, process validation, and manufacturing readiness for design revisions.

• Travel to manufacturing partners as needed to support production and issue resolution.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Manufacturing Engineering, or related field.

• 5+ years supporting high-volume PCBA manufacturing.

• Experience with SMT manufacturing, PCB fabrication, and electronic assembly processes.

• Strong understanding of manufacturing process control, yield improvement, and statistical analysis.

• Experience performing root cause analysis using methodologies such as 8D, 5 Why, Fishbone, or FMEA.

• Experience working with contract manufacturers and global supply chains.

• Ability to interpret schematics, BOMs, assembly drawings, and manufacturing documentation.

• Excellent cross-functional communication and project management skills.

Preferred Skills

• Experience with server, accelerator, networking, storage, or AI hardware platforms.

• Familiarity with ICT, Flying Probe, Boundary Scan, Functional Test, and System-Level Test.

• Experience supporting high-speed PCBAs involving GPUs, CPUs, memory, PCIe, Ethernet, or high-speed interconnects.

• Knowledge of IPC standards (IPC-A-610, IPC-6012, IPC-7711/7721).

• Experience with manufacturing execution systems (MES), PLM systems, and engineering change management.

• Enjoy solving complex manufacturing problems using data and structured root cause analysis.

• Like working directly with manufacturing partners and factory teams.

• Can bridge hardware design and manufacturing execution.

• Have strong troubleshooting skills across electronics, assembly processes, and production testing.

• Enjoy continuous improvement and process optimization.

• Are comfortable balancing technical depth with fast operational execution.

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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