System Performance Engineer, Consumer Devices

Location: San Francisco, CA (Hybrid: 4 days onsite/week). Relocation assistance available. About the Team: We build foundational platform software that enables reliable, secure, and performant products. The team works across system layers and partners closely with adjacent engineering groups to deliver robust capabilities from concept through launch. About the Role: We’re seeking a System Software Engineer to design, implement, and debug core platform components and the pipelines that build and update system images. You’ll work across operating system layers, focusing on performance, security, and deep system debugging to ship production‑grade systems. In this role, you will: Design, implement, and debug system‑level components and services across kernel and user space. Configure and maintain OS platform services (init, services, networking, security policies) and related tooling. Build and operate image and update pipelines, ensuring reliability, reproducibility, and rollback safety. Instrument and analyze performance using profiling and tracing; optimize CPU, memory, I/O, and power usage. Own platform observability and reliability: logging, crash capture, watchdogs, and diagnostics. Collaborate with cross‑functional teams to define interfaces and deliver end‑to‑end features. Establish strong engineering practices: code review, CI, reproducible builds, and release management. Partner with external suppliers to support builds and deployments. You might thrive in this role if you: Have shipped production systems software on modern operating systems. Are proficient in C/C++ and a scripting language, and comfortable with OS internals (concurrency, memory management, filesystems, networking, power management). Bring strong systems debugging skills using debuggers, tracers, profilers, and logs across kernel/user‑space boundaries. Understand configuration of platform services and interfaces, and can translate requirements into stable, well‑documented APIs. Are fluent in u

About the Team OpenAI's mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. The Consumer Devices team is building a new generation of AI-powered products that seamlessly integrate hardware and software to create intuitive, transformative experiences. We bring together experts across embedded systems, machine learning, hardware, design, and product engineering to develop products at the intersection of AI and consumer technology. About the Role OpenAI is seeking a System Power Engineer to characterize, measure, and optimize power consumption across our embedded hardware products. In this role, you will work closely with Electrical Engineering and system software teams to build power test automation, measure subsystem-level power usage, and drive improvements that directly impact battery life, thermal behavior, charging performance, and system reliability. You will help establish the methodologies and metrics used to understand and improve power efficiency across real-world product experiences, from controlled lab environments to representative day-in-the-life usage scenarios. This role requires hands-on experience with embedded hardware platforms, power instrumentation, and the analysis of power profiles and system behavior. This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We use a hybrid work model of four days per week in the office and one day working remotely. Relocation assistance is available for new hires. In this role, you will: Define and develop power testing automation to evaluate system behavior across a range of workloads and operating conditions. Measure subsystem-level power consumption using power breakout probes and other lab instrumentation. Develop and execute power characterization tests spanning basic workloads, complex mixed-use scenarios, and representative day-of-use experiences. Partner closely with Electrical Engineers to identify opportunities to improve system power efficiency. Collaborate with software engineering

About the Team The Connectivity Software Engineering team is responsible for enabling seamless, secure, and high-performance wireless connectivity across OpenAI’s products. We design and optimize Bluetooth, BLE, Wi-Fi, and emerging wireless technologies to ensure robust device pairing, network performance, and interoperability. Our work spans kernel drivers, system services, and user-level tools, with a focus on real-world performance, scalability, and reliability. About the Role OpenAI is seeking a Connectivity Software Engineer to design, implement, and optimize wireless connectivity features across our product ecosystem. You’ll work at the intersection of systems software, wireless standards, and hardware integration—building robust pairing and provisioning flows, debugging low-level protocols, and driving performance under real-world RF constraints. You will also support certification, field interoperability, and fleet-scale connectivity infrastructure. This role is based in San Francisco, CA . We use a hybrid work model of 4 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees. In this role, you will: Design, implement, and debug Bluetooth/BLE and Wi-Fi features across kernel drivers, BlueZ/wpa_supplicant/hostapd, and systemd/D-Bus services Deliver robust pairing, bonding, and provisioning flows (GATT/GAP, LE Audio/LC3, WPA3/802.1X, captive portals, NAN) Optimize link performance: throughput, latency, jitter, roaming, coexistence (BT↔Wi-Fi), and power modes (TWT, WoWLAN) Build reliable network management using NetworkManager/nmcli, nl80211/cfg80211/mac80211, DNS/DHCP/mDNS, P2P/SoftAP Instrument and analyze with packet captures and tooling (btmon/hcidump, Wireshark, iperf, eBPF/perf, spectrum sniffers) Drive interoperability and certification readiness (Bluetooth SIG, Wi-Fi Alliance) and resolve field issues with root-cause fixes Contribute to OTA-safe configuration, telemetry, and diagnostics for fleet-scale operation You might thrive in

About the Team The Software Engineering team is responsible for designing and building the scalable, performant, and secure backend systems that power our products—from early prototypes to large-scale deployments. We collaborate closely with product, hardware, and full-stack teams to ensure our infrastructure enables fast iteration while setting a strong foundation for long-term growth. About the Role As a Backend Engineer , you will design and build services, APIs, and infrastructure that support evolving product needs. You’ll apply a deep understanding of backend systems and maintain enough end-to-end context—from hardware to cloud—to guide technical decisions that best serve the product and team. We’re looking for engineers who thrive in fast-paced, collaborative environments and care deeply about building robust systems that scale. This role is based in San Francisco, CA . We use a hybrid work model of four days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees. In this role, you will: Architect, build, and maintain high-performance, secure backend systems. Design APIs, data models, and infrastructure to support evolving product needs. Balance near-term development velocity with long-term maintainability and scalability. Collaborate with cross-functional teams to ensure cohesive, end-to-end solutions. You might thrive in this role if you: Have 7+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a focus on backend systems. Have a proven track record of building and scaling systems from early stage to large scale. Are proficient with Python and Go, and familiar with a range of server-side technologies. Have a strong grasp of system design, performance optimization, and security best practices. Can reason about full-stack tradeoffs from hardware through cloud infrastructure. (Nice to have) Have experience with distributed systems and cloud architectures. (Nice to have) Bring a background in instrumentation, analytics, and performanc

About the Team OpenAI Consumer Devices is building the next generation of products that bring powerful AI into people’s everyday lives. Guided by OpenAI’s mission to ensure AGI benefits all of humanity, our team combines world-class researchers, engineers, designers, and operators who care deeply about creating useful, intuitive, and responsible technology. You’ll have the opportunity to work alongside exceptional people on ambitious, zero-to-one challenges at the intersection of hardware, software, and AI. This is a chance to help define an entirely new category of products—and shape how people experience AI in the future. Our team works across silicon, embedded systems, operating systems, and cloud services to build reliable consumer devices and the novel platforms required to support them. We partner closely with research to bring advanced AI capabilities into the physical world. About the Role As an Operating Systems Engineer focused on on-device inference, you will design, develop, and ship the OS stack that makes advanced AI capabilities reliable, responsive, and energy efficient on consumer devices. Your work will span OS services and frameworks, inference runtime integration, model fitting, scheduling, and performance and power management. You’ll partner with research to adapt models to device constraints, make design decisions across the stack, and carry solutions from early exploration through integration and production. In this role, you will: Build the inference platform: Design and implement maintainable OS services, frameworks, and clear interfaces for inference execution, model loading and lifecycle, and resource management. Fit models to device constraints: Partner with researchers on quantization, runtime integration, and memory optimization to meet memory, compute, and energy budgets while evaluating model quality and product behavior. Coordinate system resources: Develop scheduling and resource policies that balance inference with other device act

About the Team The Consumer Devices team at OpenAI builds end-to-end hardware and software systems that bring AI into the physical world. We work at the intersection of custom silicon, embedded systems, operating systems, and cloud services to deliver reliable, production-ready devices at scale. About the role We are looking for an Operating Systems Engineer to build and harden the OS foundations for OpenAI products. We are especially interested in experienced, passionate, and innovative operating systems developers who thrive on building foundational platform software and solving hard problems in security, privacy, performance, power, and reliability. You will work across the OS kernel, core OS services, security and privacy primitives, performance and power, and the frameworks that connect applications and UI to the system. This role emphasizes deep debugging and systems ownership from development through production. You will collaborate closely with embedded, firmware, hardware, application, and product engineering teams. Experience with hardware bring-up is a plus, but not required. What you will do Work on end-to-end OS capabilities spanning the OS kernel, userspace services, application frameworks, UI toolkits, and application-facing APIs. Develop, integrate, and maintain OS components, both kernel-bound and in userspace, including scheduling, memory management, filesystems, drivers, IPC/RPC mechanisms, and security-relevant subsystems. Build and maintain core OS services and daemons (init, service management, device discovery, networking primitives, time, logging, update hooks, crash handling, and so on). Design and implement security and privacy mechanisms: Secure boot and measured boot integration points (where applicable). Mandatory access control and sandboxing. Secrets management, secure storage, key handling, and least-privilege service design. Privacy-preserving telemetry, data minimization, and user-consent oriented system behaviors. Establish a perfo