System Engineer Jobs

About the Team: The Database Systems team specializes in high-performance distributed databases. Our team built Rockset, the real-time search, analytics, and vector database that powers all vector search and retrieval augmented generation (RAG) at OpenAI. In addition to retrieval, as an online database, Rockset powers core functionality across all of OpenAI's product lines and many critical internal use cases. About the Role : We are looking for engineers passionate about distributed systems, close-to-the-metal performance optimization (our core engine is written in C++), and building scalable database infrastructure from the ground up. As an engineer on the Database Systems team, you'll contribute to the core database engine, driving improvements across ingestion, query execution, indexing, and storage. You'll partner with teams across OpenAI to unlock new product capabilities and help scale online database reliability and throughput as usage grows by orders of magnitude. In this role you will: Design, build, and operate high-performance distributed systems Identify and resolve performance bottlenecks to scale infrastructure to the next order of magnitude Define long-term technical direction and guide system evolution Collaborate with product, engineering, and research teams to deliver scalable and reliable infrastructure Dig deep into complex production issues across the stack Contribute to incident response, postmortems, and best practices for system reliability You might thrive in this role if you: Have significant experience building, scaling, and optimizing distributed systems at scale Are curious about database internals, storage engines, or low-latency query systems Enjoy debugging challenging performance issues in complex, high-throughput systems Have experience operating production clusters at scale (e.g., Kubernetes or other orchestration systems) Think rigorously about scalability, correctness, and reliability Thrive in fast-paced environments with high

About the team OpenAI’s Forward Deployed Engineering team partners with customers to turn research breakthroughs into production systems. We operate at the intersection of customer delivery and core platform development. About the role Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs) lead complex end-to-end deployments of frontier models in production alongside our most strategic customers. You will own discovery, technical scoping, system design, build, and production rollout, partnering directly with customer engineering and domain teams. You will measure success through production adoption, measurable workflow impact, and eval-driven feedback that changes product and model roadmaps. You’ll work closely with our Product, Research, Partnerships, GRC, Security, and GTM teams. This role is based in Tokyo. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees. Travel is expected in this role, mainly within Japan. To succeed in this position you must be bilingual—fluent in both Japanese and English (spoken and written). Please note that your resume must be submitted in English, and the interview process will include conversations in both languages. In this role you will Own technical delivery across multiple deployments from first prototype to stable production Build full-stack systems that deliver customer value and sharpen how we learn Embed closely with customer teams, understand their needs, and guide adoption of what you build Scope work, sequence delivery, and remove blockers early Make trade-offs between scope, speed, and quality; adjust plans to protect delivery Contribute directly in the code when progress or clarity depends on it Codify working patterns into tools, playbooks, or building blocks that others can use Share field feedback that helps Research and Product understand where the models succeed and where they can improve Keep teams moving through clarity and follow-through You might thrive in this role if you Bri

About the Team Our Robotics team is focused on unlocking general-purpose robotics and advancing toward AGI-level intelligence in dynamic, real-world environments. Working across the full model and systems stack, we integrate cutting-edge hardware and software to explore a broad range of robotic form factors. We strive to seamlessly blend high-level AI capabilities with the physical constraints of real-world systems to improve people’s lives. About the Role We're looking for an experienced Electrical Engineer to help develop the next generation of robotic systems at OpenAI. This role spans the full lifecycle of hardware development, from early concept exploration and prototyping through circuit design, component selection, PCB layout, bring-up, integration, and deployment. Engineers in this role are expected to independently drive significant hardware efforts from initial concept through deployment. You will translate ambiguous goals into concrete engineering plans, make key technical decisions, coordinate closely with cross-functional partners, and own execution through the iterations required to deliver a successful system. Many of the systems we build are still being defined. You will work closely with mechanical, firmware, software, controls, and research teams to evaluate new ideas, develop novel hardware, and integrate it into robotic platforms. Success in this role requires strong engineering judgment, comfort operating in ambiguous spaces, and the ability to balance rapid experimentation with the discipline required to build reliable and scalable systems. The ideal candidate enjoys building things from first principles and is equally comfortable evaluating a new technology, debugging a prototype on the bench, reviewing PCB layout details, and driving system integration efforts. You should be able to move quickly when appropriate, but also know when investing in robustness, simplicity, or infrastructure will create leverage for future development. This role is

About the Team Security is at the foundation of OpenAI’s mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. The Security team protects OpenAI’s technology, people, and products. We are technical in what we build but are operational in how we do our work, and are committed to supporting all products and research at OpenAI. Our Security team tenets include: prioritizing for impact, enabling researchers, preparing for future transformative technologies, and engaging a robust security culture. About the Role As a Security Engineer on Detection & Response, you’ll help protect OpenAI’s most sensitive assets– including our intellectual property, customer data, and the infrastructure that supports them– by building and operating the systems we use to detect suspicious activity and respond effectively when it matters. You’ll work across endpoints, identity, cloud, hyperscale compute infrastructure, and datacenter-adjacent layers, partnering closely with security teams and infrastructure owners to define the telemetry and response requirements we need and building tooling and automation where it delivers the most leverage. In this role, you will: Build and evolve Detection & Response capabilities across OpenAI’s infrastructure, products, and research environments, with an emphasis on high-signal detection and reliable operational response. Engineer detection pipelines and tooling: develop rule lifecycle management, measurement/quality loops (coverage, precision, latency), tuning processes, and safe rollout patterns. Automate response and investigations by building workflows that reduce toil (triage, enrichment, containment, evidence capture) and improve time-to-understand/time-to-contain. Partner with other Security teams and system/infrastructure owners across the company to ensure new systems ship with the right telemetry, threat models, and response playbooks from day one. Define D&R requirements and drive visibility across endpoin

About the Team OpenAI’s Inference team powers the deployment of our most advanced models - including our GPT models, 4o Image Generation, and Whisper - across a variety of platforms. Our work ensures these models are available, performant, and scalable in production, and we partner closely with Research to bring the next generation of models into the world. We're a small, fast-moving team of engineers focused on delivering a world-class developer experience while pushing the boundaries of what AI can do. We’re expanding into multimodal inference, building the infrastructure needed to serve models that handle image, audio, and other non-text modalities. These workloads are inherently more heterogeneous and experimental, involving diverse model sizes and interactions, more complex input/output formats, and tighter coordination with product and research. About the Role We’re looking for a software engineer to help us serve OpenAI’s multimodal models at scale. You’ll be part of a small team responsible for building reliable, high-performance infrastructure for serving real-time audio, image, and other MM workloads in production. This work is inherently cross-functional: you’ll collaborate directly with researchers training these models and with product teams defining new modalities of interaction. You'll build and optimize the systems that let users generate speech, understand images, and interact with models in ways far beyond text. In this role, you will: Design and implement inference infrastructure for large-scale multimodal models. Optimize systems for high-throughput, low-latency delivery of image and audio inputs and outputs. Enable experimental research workflows to transition into reliable production services. Collaborate closely with researchers, infra teams, and product engineers to deploy state-of-the-art capabilities. Contribute to system-level improvements including GPU utilization, tensor parallelism, and hardware abstraction layers. You might thrive in t

About the Team The Systems Integration team is responsible for building the infrastructure, tooling, and validation systems that ensure our device software is reliable, testable, and ready to ship. We design and maintain automated test frameworks, hardware-in-the-loop labs, and release pipelines that keep quality signals trustworthy and enable rapid, safe product launches. Our work spans developer tools, automation, systems integration, and cross-team collaboration to ensure every release meets the highest standards. About the Role As a Software Engineer, Quality and Developer Tools , you will build and own the systems that validate our device software—from test frameworks and regression infrastructure to hardware-in-the-loop labs and release gates. You’ll design the tooling and automation that keep quality signals trustworthy, integrate them into CI/CD, and make it easy for engineers and QA vendor technicians to execute reliable, repeatable workflows. We’re looking for engineers with deep experience in software quality, automation, developer tooling, and hardware-software integration who thrive on building scalable, reliable systems for validation and release readiness. 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: Test infrastructure & frameworks: Design, implement, and maintain a unified test framework for device software across unit, integration, system, and end-to-end testing, with reproducible runs and integrations with GitHub, Linear, and Slack. CI/CD integration & releases: Integrate test suites with Buildkite, enforce promotion criteria for staging and production, auto-file regressions, and publish traceable artifacts and release notes. Hardware-in-the-loop lab design & orchestration: Plan and bring up racks, power and networking systems, and orchestration for device testing; support automated flashing, provisioning

About the Team IT Systems Operations serves as the operational control layer connecting Security, Engineering, and Employee Technology platforms. The team ensures employee-facing systems, identity workflows, and enterprise applications operate in a predictable, governed, and continuously reliable manner as the organization scales. Beyond implementation, the team establishes structured operating patterns that ensure platform changes, access models, integrations, and lifecycle workflows evolve safely and consistently across the enterprise environment. About the Role This role acts as an operational owner for identity-connected enterprise SaaS platforms and system change controls supporting OpenAI’s compliance requirements. The engineer will be responsible for ensuring that production configuration, access models, and platform changes remain compliant, auditable, and consistently operated through defined controls. You will own and operationalize controlled system and workflow changes across identity platforms, SaaS applications, collaboration tooling, and enterprise infrastructure. You will partner closely with Security, Platform Engineering, and IT Support Operations to: Ensure identity and access workflows behave consistently across systems Implement structured rollout and configuration practices for enterprise applications Improve visibility and traceability of system changes impacting employee workflows Translate operational requirements into durable automation and policy-aligned implementations Success in this role requires not only strong engineering capability, but also sound operational judgment, disciplined documentation practices, and effective cross-functional collaboration. In this role, you will: Enterprise SaaS & Identity Platform Ownership Own administration and operational stewardship of enterprise SaaS and identity-connected platforms, ensuring configuration integrity, access governance, and compliance with defined control requirements. Own onboard

About the Team The Safety Systems team is dedicated to ensuring the safety, robustness, and reliability of AI models and their deployment in the real world. Learn more about OpenAI’s approach to safety. Building on the many years of our practical alignment work and applied safety efforts, Safety Systems addresses emerging safety issues and develops new fundamental solutions to enable the safe deployment of our most advanced models and future AGI, to make AI that is beneficial and trustworthy. About the Role At OpenAI, we're dedicated to advancing artificial intelligence, and we know that creating a secure and reliable platform is vital to our mission. That's why we're seeking a software engineer to help us build out our trust and safety capabilities. In this role, you'll work with our entire engineering team to design and implement systems that detect and prevent abuse, promote user safety, and reduce risk across our platform. You'll be at the forefront of our efforts to ensure that the immense potential of AI is harnessed in a responsible and sustainable manner. Your Responsibilities: Architect, build, and maintain anti-abuse and content moderation infrastructure designed to protect us and end users from unwanted behavior. Work closely with our other engineers and researchers to utilize both industry standard and novel AI techniques to measure, monitor and improve AI models’ alignment to human values. . Diagnose and remediate active incidents on the platform and build new tooling and infrastructure that address the root causes of system failure. You might thrive in this role if: You have built and run production services in a high growth, rapidly scaling environment. You can debug live issues and restore systems quickly. You have worked on content safety, fraud, or abuse, or are motivated and excited to work on present-day (“now-term”) AI safety. You have experience with Python or with modern languages such as C++, Rust, or Go, and are able to quickly ramp up on Py

About the Team Security is at the foundation of OpenAI’s mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. The Security team protects OpenAI’s technology, people, and products. We are technical in what we build but are operational in how we do our work, and are committed to supporting all products and research at OpenAI. Our Security team tenets include: prioritizing for impact, enabling researchers, preparing for future transformative technologies, and engaging a robust security culture. About the Role As a Security Engineer on Detection & Response, you’ll help protect OpenAI’s most sensitive assets– including our intellectual property, customer data, and the infrastructure that supports them– by building and operating the systems we use to detect suspicious activity and respond effectively when it matters. You’ll work across endpoints, identity, cloud, hyperscale compute infrastructure, and datacenter-adjacent layers, partnering closely with security teams and infrastructure owners to define the telemetry and response requirements we need and building tooling and automation where it delivers the most leverage. In this role, you will: Build and evolve Detection & Response capabilities across OpenAI’s infrastructure, products, and research environments, with an emphasis on high-signal detection and reliable operational response. Engineer detection pipelines and tooling: develop rule lifecycle management, measurement/quality loops (coverage, precision, latency), tuning processes, and safe rollout patterns. Automate response and investigations by building workflows that reduce toil (triage, enrichment, containment, evidence capture) and improve time-to-understand/time-to-contain. Partner with other Security teams and system/infrastructure owners across the company to ensure new systems ship with the right telemetry, threat models, and response playbooks from day one. Define D&R requirements and drive visibility across endpoin

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 The Platform Systems team at OpenAI operates at the intersection of cutting-edge AI and large-scale distributed systems. We build the engineering and research infrastructure required to train OpenAI’s flagship models on some of the world’s largest, custom-built supercomputers. Our team develops core model training software and works deep in the stack - spanning collective communication, compute efficiency, parallelism strategies, fault tolerance, failure detection, and observability. The systems we build are foundational to OpenAI’s research velocity, enabling reliable, efficient training at frontier scale. We collaborate closely with researchers across the organization, continuously incorporating learnings from across OpenAI into the evolution of our training platform. About the Role As a Software Engineer, Platform Systems, you will design and build distributed systems that provide visibility into large-scale training workloads and help operate them reliably at scale. You’ll work on failure detection, tracing, and observability systems that identify slow or faulty nodes, surface performance bottlenecks, and help engineers understand and optimize massive distributed training jobs. This infrastructure is critical to operating OpenAI’s training stack and is actively evolving to support new use cases and increasingly complex workloads. This role sits at the core of our training infrastructure, blending systems engineering, performance analysis, and large-scale debugging. In This Role, You Will Design and build distributed failure detection, tracing, and profiling systems for large-scale AI training jobs Develop tooling to identify slow, faulty, or misbehaving nodes and provide actionable visibility into system behavior Improve observability, reliability, and performance across OpenAI’s training platform Debug and resolve issues in complex, high-throughput distributed systems Collaborate with systems, infrastructure, and research teams to evolve platform

About the team OpenAI’s Forward Deployed Engineering team partners with customers to turn research breakthroughs into production systems. We operate at the intersection of customer delivery and core platform development. About the role Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs) lead complex end-to-end deployments of frontier models in production alongside our most strategic customers. You will own discovery, technical scoping, system design, build, and production rollout, partnering directly with customer engineering and domain teams. You will measure success through production adoption, measurable workflow impact, and eval-driven feedback that changes product and model roadmaps. You’ll work closely with our Product, Research, Partnerships, GRC, Security, and GTM teams. This role is based in Seattle. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week. We offer relocation assistance. Travel up to 50% is required. In this role you will Own technical delivery across multiple deployments from first prototype to stable production Build full-stack systems that deliver customer value and sharpen how we learn Embed closely with customer teams, understand their needs, and guide adoption of what you build Scope work, sequence delivery, and remove blockers early Make trade-offs between scope, speed, and quality; adjust plans to protect delivery Contribute directly in the code when progress or clarity depends on it Codify working patterns into tools, playbooks, or building blocks that others can use Share field feedback that helps Research and Product understand where the models succeed and where they can improve Keep teams moving through clarity and follow-through You might thrive in this role if you Bring 5+ years of engineering or technical deployment experience that includes customer-facing work Have scoped and delivered complex systems in fast-moving or ambiguous environments Write and review production-grade code across frontend and backend using Python, JavaScript, or co

About the Team The Software Engineering Firmware team builds reliable, high-performance systems on custom hardware. We work closely with hardware engineers to design, optimize, and ship software that bridges cutting-edge devices and real-world constraints like memory, power, and latency. Our work spans early prototyping through product launch, ensuring that our embedded platforms are robust, efficient, and production-ready. About the Role As a Firmware Engineer , you will design, implement, and debug software for embedded devices. You’ll own low-level bring-up, write production C/C++ code, and partner closely with hardware teams to deliver reliable, high-performance systems. We’re looking for engineers with deep embedded expertise, strong debugging skills, and a passion for building systems that perform under real-world conditions. 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: Design, implement, and debug software for embedded devices. Contribute to defining software requirements, interfaces, and test plans. Bring up and debug new boards. Analyze performance, memory, and power profiles and implement optimizations. Investigate field issues, perform root-cause analysis, and deliver robust fixes. Foster good software engineering practices. You might thrive in this role if you: Have deep experience shipping embedded systems (around 10+ years). Are proficient in C and C++. Are familiar with embedded toolchains, operating systems, and debugging tools. Have experience with both rapid prototyping and scalable product development. (Nice to have) Have experience with Zephyr RTOS. (Nice to have) Have worked with networking/wireless stacks (BLE, Wi-Fi). (Nice to have) Have experience with robotic system bring-up or Linux kernel development. About OpenAI OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose arti

About the Team The Platform Systems team at OpenAI operates at the intersection of cutting-edge AI and large-scale distributed systems. We build the engineering and research infrastructure required to train OpenAI’s flagship models on some of the world’s largest, custom-built supercomputers. Our team develops core model training software and works deep in the stack - spanning collective communication, compute efficiency, parallelism strategies, fault tolerance, failure detection, and observability. The systems we build are foundational to OpenAI’s research velocity, enabling reliable, efficient training at frontier scale. We collaborate closely with researchers across the organization, continuously incorporating learnings from across OpenAI into the evolution of our training platform. About the Role As a Software Engineer, Platform Systems, you will design and build distributed systems that provide visibility into large-scale training workloads and help operate them reliably at scale. You’ll work on failure detection, tracing, and observability systems that identify slow or faulty nodes, surface performance bottlenecks, and help engineers understand and optimize massive distributed training jobs. This infrastructure is critical to operating OpenAI’s training stack and is actively evolving to support new use cases and increasingly complex workloads. This role sits at the core of our training infrastructure, blending systems engineering, performance analysis, and large-scale debugging. In This Role, You Will Design and build distributed failure detection, tracing, and profiling systems for large-scale AI training jobs Develop tooling to identify slow, faulty, or misbehaving nodes and provide actionable visibility into system behavior Improve observability, reliability, and performance across OpenAI’s training platform Debug and resolve issues in complex, high-throughput distributed systems Collaborate with systems, infrastructure, and research teams to evolve platform

About the Team The Release Engineer team is responsible for building and maintaining the systems that power software delivery—from CI/CD pipelines and artifact management to release automation and fleet telemetry. We ensure software across bootloaders, firmware, operating systems, and cloud services is built reproducibly, validated rigorously, and released safely at scale. About the Role As a Release Engineer, you’ll design, build, and operate release infrastructure that enables reliable, secure, and traceable software delivery across complex multi-component systems. You’ll partner closely with embedded, cloud, and QA teams to ensure that every build—from development to OTA deployment—is fast, verifiable, and production-ready. We’re looking for engineers who take pride in automation, build reproducibility, and system reliability—and who enjoy building the connective tissue that allows hardware and software to ship together seamlessly. 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: Design and operate CI/CD pipelines for multi-component builds (bootloader, firmware, OS images, backend, companion apps) using hermetic toolchains. Define versioning and branching strategies; automate promotions, changelogs, and artifact retention. Integrate unit, integration, and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) test results; quarantine flaky tests, auto-bisect failures, and block unsafe promotions. Build A/B OTA update flows with verity and health checks; run staged rollouts and canaries; implement safe rollback and roll-forward strategies. Implement code signing for binaries and firmware, generate SBOMs, run vulnerability scanning, and attach build attestations and provenance. Manage dashboards and alerts for build health, promotion latency, failure rates, and fleet update telemetry. You might thrive in this role if you: Have experience building and operating buil