Operations Manager, Data Acquisition

About the Team
Our Robotics team is focused on unlocking general-purpose robotics and advancing toward AGI-level intelligence in dynamic, real-world environments. Working across the full model and systems stack, we integrate cutting-edge hardware and software to explore a broad range of robotic form factors. We strive to seamlessly blend high-level AI capabilities with the physical constraints of real-world systems to improve people’s lives.

About the Role
We are seeking a Leader, DAQ Operations to own and scale the system that enables robotics data collection across OpenAI’s robotics program. This system spans our robotic stations, a large managed workforce, and facilities, while engineering and research teams continuously evolve the platforms and workflows running on top.

You will sit at the center of this system, ensuring alignment across research, engineering, operations, and external partners so data collection runs reliably at scale. This is a single-threaded ownership role—responsible for making the system operate cohesively, scale across sites, and continuously improve as robotics capabilities evolve.

Success in this role requires strong cross-domain leadership and coordination across senior stakeholders, including robotics engineering, software teams, research leaders, operations teams, and external service partners.

In this role, you will:

Own the DAQ Operating System:

• Own the end-to-end system that enables robotics data collection across stations, workforce, and facilities

• Ensure robotics fleet, station software, workforce execution, and infrastructure operate as a single, reliable system

• Set operating rhythms, decision frameworks, and escalation paths that keep execution unblocked

• Drive step-function improvements in throughput, reliability, and data quality

Drive Cross-Functional Execution:

• Act as the single point of operational alignment across robotics research, engineering, and operations

• Force clarity on priorities, readiness, and constraints to keep deployments moving

• Ensure new platforms, workflows, and capabilities land cleanly into operations

• Push real-world operational feedback upstream to shape engineering and research decisions

Own Workforce & Vendor Performance:

• Own execution of the managed workforce model through a services partner

• Set expectations, metrics, and escalation paths with vendor leadership

• Ensure workforce readiness keeps pace with changing station workflows and programs

• Hold partners accountable to performance, throughput, and quality outcomes

Run Fleet, Software, and Infrastructure Coordination:

• Ensure tight coordination across fleet reliability, station software, and operational infrastructure

• Own readiness of materials, consumables, and station inputs required for continuous execution

• Surface issues early, drive fast resolution, and prevent recurrence through system fixes

Scale Site Operations:

• Own expansion of DAQ operations

• Define and enforce repeatable operating standards across sites

• Build site leadership structure and coordination mechanisms that scale with growth

• Ensure consistent execution as complexity and footprint increase

Drive Alignment in Ambiguous Environments:

• Create clarity across senior stakeholders when priorities, timelines, and constraints conflict

• Make tradeoffs explicit and drive decisions to keep execution moving

• Maintain tight communication across engineering, research, and operations as systems evolve

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Have led complex, cross-functional systems spanning engineering, operations, and external partners

• Operate as a single-threaded owner who drives alignment and execution across ambiguous environments

• Can impose structure, operating cadence, and accountability on messy, evolving systems

• Are equally comfortable with senior technical stakeholders and frontline operational teams

• Default to action, speed, and clarity over process for its own sake

• Enjoy owning system-level outcomes, not just functional pieces

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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