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Hardware Strategic Sourcing & Manufacturing Partnerships Manager

OpenAI· Scaling
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Hybrid (Singapore)Full-timePosted 2mo ago

About the role

OpenAI is seeking a Hardware Strategic Sourcing & Manufacturing Partnerships Manager based in Singapore to lead strategic engagements with JDMs, CMs, and ODMs across the hardware ecosystem, manage the complete manufacturing partner lifecycle, and collaborate with cross-functional teams to enable AI-native silicon and rack-scale systems.

Responsibilities

  • 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.

Qualifications

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

Skills

Required:Strategic SourcingNegotiationRFI/RFP LeadershipCost Modeling / Should-CostTechnical Credibility with Hardware Teams

Benefits

  • Not specified in the description
Last updated Oct 8, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About OpenAI

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