Environmental Lead

About OpenAI

OpenAI is building the world’s most advanced AI infrastructure platform. Through the Industrial program, we are developing a global portfolio of next-generation data center campuses that integrate power, land, water, fiber, and community systems into resilient, long-term AI infrastructure.

The Site Development & Readiness organization ensures that every location we advance is technically buildable, commercially viable, environmentally sound, and supported by the communities in which we operate. Environmental and community performance are treated as first-order constraints, not downstream compliance activities.

About the Role

The Environmental & Community Stewardship Lead owns how OpenAI evaluates, governs, and delivers environmental and community performance across its global data center portfolio.

This role sets OpenAI’s environmental standards, oversees third-party developers and consultants, leads early-stage environmental risk screening, and ensures projects meet both regulatory requirements and OpenAI’s long-term stewardship commitments. The role plays a central part in determining which sites OpenAI advances, how they are permitted, and how they are received by host communities.

This is an individual contributor lead role and does not have direct reports initially. The role spans the full environmental lifecycle from site selection through permitting, construction, early operations, and long-term stewardship.

Key Responsibilities:

- You will design and deliver community-aligned environmental programs that improve permitting outcomes, strengthen local trust, and provide high-impact, cost-effective benefits to host communities.

- You will lead environmental diligence and risk assessment across prospective sites, including wetlands, water supply, floodplains, endangered species, cultural resources, stormwater, air, noise, and construction impacts, translating findings into commercial, schedule, and development decisions.

- You will manage site-level environmental investigations and liability review, including Phase I / Phase II ESAs, noise studies, archaeological and cultural-resource reviews, and brownfield or acquired-property environmental liability assessment where relevant.

- You will establish and enforce OpenAI’s environmental and community standards across land developers, utilities, EPCs, and joint-venture partners, including auditing third-party studies, mitigation plans, and construction practices to ensure alignment with OpenAI’s long-term operating model.

- You will lead environmental and permitting strategies across federal, state, and local agencies, including NEPA, USACE Section 404, state wetlands, stormwater, air, water, and waste, sequencing approvals to support development schedules and operations.

- You will oversee environmental compliance during construction and early operations, including stormwater (SWPPP), spill prevention (SPCC), hazardous materials, PFAS, and related field programs.

- You will partner closely with internal teams across site selection, power, engineering, and community affairs to integrate environmental and community considerations into every stage of project development.

Qualifications:

- 8+ years of experience in environmental permitting, infrastructure development, energy, or large-scale project delivery, with hands-on experience navigating complex federal and state regulatory frameworks.

- Managed environmental consultants, developers, and regulators on politically visible, multi-stakeholder projects and are comfortable setting standards, holding partners accountable, and making difficult calls when risks are too high.

- Understand how environmental risk translates into financial, schedule, and reputational risk, and you know how to design mitigation strategies that are practical, cost-effective, and credible with both regulators and communities.

- Comfortable operating in ambiguous, fast-moving environments and can balance long-term stewardship with the need to deliver large-scale infrastructure on aggressive timelines.

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.

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