Why This Job is Featured on The SaaS Jobs
This role stands out in the SaaS ecosystem because it sits at the intersection of cloud-scale infrastructure and enterprise security, where reliability and trust are foundational to any product delivered as a service. With OpenAI expanding a global compute footprint, the work centers on standardising and deploying physical security architectures across multiple data center environments, a domain that increasingly underpins modern SaaS and AI platforms.
From a career perspective, the position builds durable SaaS-adjacent expertise in designing systems that must operate consistently across regions, vendors, and operating models. It offers repeated exposure to translating risk and compliance needs into implementable technical patterns, then validating those patterns in the field through prototyping, integration, and troubleshooting. That combination mirrors how mature SaaS organisations scale internal platforms, with an emphasis on repeatability, lifecycle management, and operational resilience.
The role is best suited to a senior engineer who prefers hands-on architecture rather than purely advisory work, and who is comfortable coordinating across infrastructure, networking, security operations, and external providers. It will fit someone motivated by ambiguity, global standard-setting, and the practical realities of deploying technology in production facilities, including periodic travel for site work and design reviews.
The section above is editorial commentary from The SaaS Jobs, provided to help SaaS professionals understand the role in a broader industry context.
Job Description
About the Role
OpenAI is seeking a Data Center Physical Security Systems Engineer to define and deliver the physical security technology architecture that protects the infrastructure powering advanced AI systems. As OpenAI’s global compute footprint continues to expand, this role will partner closely with infrastructure engineering, hardware operations, networking, and regional operations teams to design and deploy scalable security architectures across a diverse portfolio of data center environments.
The role is responsible for establishing architecture standards, technical requirements, and system designs that address security, operational, and compliance needs while supporting the rapid growth of OpenAI’s global infrastructure. This is not a purely advisory architecture position. The successful candidate will actively prototype, integrate, troubleshoot, and drive technical solutions through implementation, helping transform security requirements into resilient, operational capabilities.
The ideal candidate combines deep expertise in physical security systems with the ability to design scalable, integrated, and reliable security architectures that support critical infrastructure at global scale.
Ability to travel approximately 25% globally to support design reviews, deployments, and site assessments.
In this role, you will:
Define and design the physical security technology architecture strategy for AI data center environments, establishing scalable and resilient security system designs aligned with OpenAI’s infrastructure risk profile
Define enterprise architecture standards and technical patterns for physical security capabilities, including access control, video surveillance, intrusion detection, identity-based access, integrated monitoring, and emerging security technologies.
Lead the architecture and governance of physical security systems and supporting platforms.
Define security standards and requirements across diverse infrastructure deployment models.
Define standards for secure deployment, operational resilience, maintenance, and lifecycle management of security technologies.
Partner with Security Operations, Infrastructure, Cybersecurity, Compliance, Legal, Procurement, and external providers to ensure physical security systems are integrated, operationally effective, and capable of supporting enterprise risk management objectives.
Provide technical leadership, design governance, and continuous improvement through architecture reviews, technology evaluations, deployment oversight, and the evolution of standards, reference architectures, and best practices across global AI infrastructure deployments.
You might thrive in this role if you have:
Significant experience in physical security technology, security engineering, systems engineering, OT / ICS security, or adjacent cyber-physical infrastructure domains, and you can turn ambiguous problems into working technical systems.
15+ years of experience in physical security systems architecture, infrastructure security engineering, or security technology design.
Experience building or hardening systems in hyperscale infrastructure, critical infrastructure, large-scale data centers, or complex cyber-physical environments.
Experience designing physical security systems across multi-site or global infrastructure environments.
Experience moving from architecture into implementation: prototyping, integrating, commissioning, validating, and resolving hard field issues.
Experience partnering with engineering, construction, networking, cybersecurity, SOC/GSOC, compliance, procurement, and provider teams.
Strong judgment about where direct execution is required versus where a scalable partner or platform model is the right answer.
Strong ability to translate complex architecture decisions into operational security outcomes.
Strong experience with several of the following:
Certified in enterprise access control systems
Certified in video management systems and CCTV analytics
Identity-driven access management
Integrated security monitoring
Physical security infrastructure management
CPP, PMP, CSPM, CompTIA Security+, CISSP, and PMP certifications are not required but highly desirable.
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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