Power Trading Lead

Job description

About the Team OpenAI, in close collaboration with our capital partners, is building the world’s most advanced AI infrastructure ecosystem. The Power & Land team owns the energy strategy required to secure reliable, scalable, and economically resilient power for OpenAI’s global data center portfolio. About the Role The Power Trading Lead will own commodity hedging strategy and execution across OpenAI’s data center power portfolio. This role will translate large, dynamic electricity and fuel exposures into practical hedging, procurement, and risk-management strategies that protect infrastructure economics while preserving flexibility for growth. This is an individual contributor lead role and does not have direct reports initially. The role will work across power markets, utility tariffs, retail and wholesale supply structures, natural gas and power hedges, renewable and clean firm products, and portfolio risk analytics to support long-term compute growth. Key Responsibilities - Develop and maintain OpenAI’s commodity hedging strategy across electricity, natural gas, and related energy exposures for data center operations and growth. - Quantify portfolio exposure by market, site, load shape, tenor, tariff, and supply structure, and translate that exposure into clear hedging recommendations. - Evaluate and execute hedging structures including fixed-price supply, forwards, swaps, options, retail supply products, congestion and basis risk mitigation, and related instruments where appropriate. - Partner with utilities, suppliers, traders, banks, consultants, and market counterparties to source competitive products and improve risk-adjusted energy economics. - Build decision frameworks for when to hedge, how much to hedge, and which risks to retain across different stages of site development, construction, and operations. - Coordinate with finance, treasury, legal, procurement, energy regulatory, sustainability, and site-readiness teams to ensure hedging strategy aligns with broader infrastructure objectives. - Monitor wholesale power markets, gas markets, congestion, basis, capacity, ancillary services, tariff developments, and regulatory changes that could affect portfolio cost or reliability. - Produce executive-ready analyses on commodity risk, hedge performance, downside scenarios, and recommended actions. - Help build repeatable governance, controls, reporting, and playbooks for commodity risk management across the infrastructure portfolio. Qualifications - 10+ years in power trading, energy procurement, commodity risk management, utility strategy, energy markets, or related roles. - Deep understanding of U.S. wholesale power markets, retail supply structures, utility tariffs, congestion and basis risk, capacity, and natural gas market linkages. - Experience designing or executing hedging strategies for large energy consumers, generators, utilities, data centers, or other power-intensive infrastructure. - Strong analytical ability to translate complex market exposure into clear commercial, financial, and executive recommendations. - Experience working with ISDAs, supply contracts, risk limits, approvals, and internal controls is a plus. - Strong cross-functional communication skills and comfort operating in a fast-moving, ambiguous environment. - Excellent judgment, documentation, and executive-summary skills. 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 https://cdn.openai.com/policies/eeo-policy-statement.pdf. 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. 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