Fire Protection Engineer

Job description

About the Team OpenAI's Industrial Compute organization delivers the infrastructure that powers frontier AI models. Within Infrastructure Delivery, we turn engineering concepts into safe, reliable, and operational AI campuses by working across design, construction, utilities, commissioning, operations, and external partners. The fire protection function establishes the life-safety and property-protection strategy for these campuses. The team connects code requirements and engineering standards to practical design, construction, testing, incident readiness, and long-term operations. About the Role We are seeking a Fire Protection Engineer to lead owner-side fire and life-safety engineering across large-scale data center programs. You will establish design criteria, review complex fire protection systems, coordinate with authorities and delivery partners, and ensure that fire and life-safety requirements remain clear from early design through construction, commissioning, and operational handover. This role requires strong technical judgment across detection, alarm, suppression, smoke control, water supply, emergency response, and code compliance. You will work closely with engineering, construction, safety, security, commissioning, and operations teams to resolve risks quickly without compromising life safety, reliability, or schedule. Key Responsibilities Develop and maintain fire protection and life-safety design criteria, technical standards, and review requirements for self-build data center campuses. Review fire protection drawings, specifications, code analyses, fire and life-safety narratives, hydraulic calculations, equipment submittals, and sequences of operation across all project phases. Provide owner-side engineering direction for fire detection and alarm, automatic suppression, fire pumps and water storage, smoke control, emergency communication, and related life-safety systems. Integrate fire protection requirements with architectural, structural, electrical, mechanical, controls, security, hardware, and operational systems. Partner with code officials, authorities having jurisdiction, insurers, consultants, contractors, and equipment vendors to resolve code interpretations and approval risks. Support constructability reviews, RFIs, submittals, field inspections, deficiency resolution, and change management during active construction. Define com…