Hardware Operations Engineer in San Francisco

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 custom silicon, embedded systems, operating systems, and cloud services to build reliable consumer devices and the platforms behind them. We connect kernel development with the broader software stack to deliver complete product capabilities. About the Role As an Operating Systems Engineer focused on the Linux kernel, you will design, develop, and maintain the kernel capabilities that underpin OpenAI’s consumer devices. You’ll bring deep expertise in one or more Linux kernel subsystems and carry solutions through the higher-level software stack. Your ownership will extend into the userspace services, libraries, tools, and interfaces needed to deliver complete product features. You’ll shape the boundaries between kernel and userspace, make design decisions across the stack, and see your work through development, integration, and production. In this role, you will: Build kernel capabilities: Design, implement, and maintain Linux kernel subsystem changes that support device capabilities and product requirements. Own features across the stack: Choose appropriate kernel and userspace boundaries, and build the interfaces and supporting components needed to deliver reliable features in shipped products. Debug complex system behavior: Use tracing, profiling, instrumentation, and diagnostic tools to resolve correctness, concurrency, p

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 systems software and product engineering to build reliable consumer devices and the platforms behind them. We develop the connectivity and networking foundations that support communication across OpenAI products and systems. About the Role As an Operating Systems Engineer focused on connectivity and networking, you will design, develop, and maintain the OS capabilities that enable reliable, secure, and efficient communication across OpenAI products and systems. Your work will span Wi-Fi and Bluetooth frameworks, IP networking, and advanced network services and policy. You’ll develop OS services, libraries, and interfaces for a broad range of connectivity needs, make design decisions across software boundaries, and carry solutions through development, integration, and production. In this role, you will: Build connectivity foundations: Design, implement, and maintain OS services, frameworks, and APIs for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and IP networking. Develop reusable network capabilities: Build connection management, network configuration and selection, service discovery, and routing capabilities. Enable secure communication: Develop network services and policies for secure communication, traffic management, and isolation across varied network environments. Resolve issues across the stack: Investigate correctness, concurrency, interoper

About the Team OpenAI’s Hardware organization develops AI-native silicon and system-level solutions for the unique demands of advanced AI workloads. Building on efforts like Jalapeño, the team is developing future generations of AI-native silicon and tightly integrated systems to power the next generation of frontier models. By co-designing chips, systems, tools, and methodologies, the team helps deliver faster, more efficient, and production-ready hardware for OpenAI’s supercomputing platform. Role summary We are seeking a Networking Operating System Firmware Engineer to help bootstrap and scale the switching layer of our AI supercomputers. In this role, you will build and maintain custom NOS images from scratch, using open source components from SONiC, SAI, FRR, and related networking stacks while working across the Linux kernel, switch ASIC SAI/SDKs, platform drivers, control-plane services, and orchestration layers. This is a software engineering role that requires a deep understanding of networking, NOS internals, switch hardware, and production systems. You will design, implement, test, and debug production NOS software across platform drivers, routing and control-plane state, ASIC programming, observability, and fleet integration. The engineer in this role should be able to work through ambiguous, open-ended technical problems and drive feature development across software, hardware, and vendor boundaries. This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees. In this role, you will Design, develop, and maintain custom NOS images for large-scale AI fabrics, using open source components from SONiC, FRR, and related networking stacks. Integrate, build and configure Linux kernel components, device drivers, switch ASIC SDKs, and SAI layers. Bring up new switch platforms, including thermal and fan control, power monitoring, transceiver management, watchdogs, OSFP CMIS, L

About the Team The Hardware Health and Observability team owns the end-to-end health lifecycle of OpenAI’s global compute fleet. Our mission is to maximize healthy, usable compute across accelerator vendors, generations, cloud providers, and regions through reliable health signals, automated remediation, and scalable operational tooling. We build the systems that observe, detect, remediate, and verify hardware issues across GPUs, CPUs, networking, and platform infrastructure, enabling frontier model training and inference workloads to run reliably at hyperscale. We are the last line of defense for the success of OAI’s production and research workloads. About the Role On the Hardware Health and Observability team, you’ll build critical infrastructure that keeps OpenAI’s largest compute clusters healthy and operational at scale. Even small numbers of unhealthy systems can impact large-scale training and inference workloads. This team focuses on minimizing downtime, improving fleet efficiency, and ensuring compute resources remain continuously available to researchers and product teams. Engineers on this team own problems end-to-end, from defining health signals and debugging failures to building automated remediation systems that operate across millions of GPUs globally. In this role, you will: Define and maintain health signals across GPUs, CPUs, networking, and platform infrastructure. Build and evolve health checks that detect, remediate, and verify failures at scale. Ensure critical health checks execute with minimal latency to maximize workload uptime. Investigate hardware failures and system-level issues across large-scale compute environments. Own node lifecycle workflows including drain, quarantine, repair, RMA, and return-to-service processes. Build automation and tooling that enables global cluster management with minimal manual intervention. Partner with workload, reliability, and provider teams to integrate health signals into training and inference system

About the team The Fleet team at OpenAI supports the computing environment that powers our cutting-edge research and product development. We oversee large-scale systems that span data centers, GPUs, networking, and more, ensuring high availability, performance, and efficiency. Our work enables OpenAI’s models to operate seamlessly at scale, supporting both internal research and external products like ChatGPT. We prioritize safety, reliability, and responsible AI deployment over unchecked growth. About the role As a software engineer on the Fleet Hardware team, you will be responsible for the reliability and uptime of all of OpenAI’s compute fleet. Minimizing hardware failure is key to research training progress and stable services, as even a single hardware hiccup can cause significant disruptions. With increasingly large supercomputers, the stakes continue to rise. Being at the forefront of technology means that we are often the pioneers in troubleshooting these state-of-the-art systems at scale. This is a unique opportunity to work with cutting-edge technologies and devise innovative solutions to maintain the health and efficiency of our supercomputing infrastructure. Our team empowers strong engineers with a high degree of autonomy and ownership, as well as ability to effect change. This role will require a keen focus on system-level comprehensive investigations and the development of automated solutions. We want people who go deep on problems, investigate as thoroughly as possible, and build automation for detection and remediation at scale. In this role, you will: Build and maintain automation systems for provisioning and managing server fleets. Develop tools to monitor server health, performance, and lifecycle events. Collaborate with clusters, networking, and infrastructure teams. Partner with external operators to ensure a high level of quality. Identify and fix performance bottlenecks and inefficiencies. Continuously improve automation to reduce manual work

About the Team OpenAI’s Hardware organization develops silicon and system-level solutions designed for the unique demands of advanced AI workloads. The team is responsible for building the next generation of AI-native silicon while working closely with software and research partners to co-design hardware tightly integrated with AI models. In addition to delivering production-grade silicon for OpenAI’s supercomputing infrastructure, the team also creates custom design tools and methodologies that accelerate innovation and enable hardware optimized specifically for AI. About the Role We're looking for an Optical Interconnect System Engineer to design, qualify, and deploy scalable optical connectivity for large-scale AI infrastructure. This role spans fiber-system architecture, optical-mechanical integration, validation, reliability, deployment, and serviceability. You will work with optical, mechanical, electrical, networking, manufacturing, reliability, and data-center teams to translate system needs into practical interconnect solutions. This is a hands-on role for someone who can connect design decisions with installation, qualification, troubleshooting, and long-term operational performance. In this role, you will: Define optical interconnect architectures and requirements across hardware platforms and rack-level systems. Design high-density fiber systems for performance, density, reliability, installation, and serviceability. Lead optical-mechanical integration and cross-functional design reviews. Develop test and qualification plans for optical components, modules, switching platforms, and integrated systems. Own optical loss budgets, routing guidelines, handling requirements, and serviceability criteria. Support system bring-up, deployment, troubleshooting, failure analysis, and reliability improvement. Create reusable design guidelines, interface requirements, and qualification methods. You might thrive in this role if you have: Core experience Experience desi

About the Team OpenAI’s Hardware organization develops AI-native silicon and system-level solutions for the unique demands of advanced AI workloads. Building on efforts like Jalapeño, the team is developing future generations of AI-native silicon and tightly integrated systems to power the next generation of frontier models. By co-designing chips, systems, tools, and methodologies, the team helps deliver faster, more efficient, and production-ready hardware for OpenAI’s supercomputing platform. About the Role You will work on the systems software strategy and execution that brings new AI silicon from first power-on to a fully integrated system running production-representative models at expected functionality and performance. You will define how software exercises and validates compute, memory, interconnect, and I/O subsystems, then build the diagnostics, automation, and observability needed to find issues quickly. This role sits at the center of silicon, firmware, platform, systems, and workload teams. You will turn hardware specifications and performance targets into an end-to-end bringup plan, drive cross-functional debug, and establish the stress and regression infrastructure that makes each new platform reliable across operating environments. In this role, you will: Contribute to the end-to-end software bringup and validation strategy for new silicon and first-party systems. Define software-driven test coverage across compute, memory, interconnect, I/O, and their system-level interactions. Build diagnostics, test automation, telemetry, and regression infrastructure that accelerate first-silicon learning and issue isolation. Lead bringup from initial silicon arrival through board and system integration, docking, runtime enablement, and model execution. Design stress tests that characterize reliability, performance, and stability across workloads and operating conditions. Translate architecture specifications and performance models into measurable acceptance crit

About the Team The Consumer Products 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. Within Consumer Products, the camera stack is a critical sensing component. The team partners closely with electrical engineering, silicon vendors, systems, and higher-level perception and product teams to bring up new hardware, stabilize capture pipelines, and ensure camera systems are robust, debuggable, and ready for real-world deployment. This work spans early prototypes through production, with a strong emphasis on correctness, repeatability, and long-term reliability. About the Role As a Camera Firmware Engineer, you will own low-level camera enablement on custom hardware—from early board bring-up through stable production capture. You will develop and maintain the firmware and software that makes camera sensors reliable, controllable, and debuggable, forming the foundation for higher-level camera pipelines and product features. This role is highly hands-on and systems-oriented. You will work close to the hardware, diagnose real-world timing and integration issues, and build tooling that accelerates iteration across the entire camera stack. This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We follow a hybrid work model with four days per week in the office and offer relocation assistance to new employees. In This Role, You Will Bring up new camera sensors and modules on prototype and production boards, including link stability, sensor control, and correct power, reset, and clock sequencing. Develop and maintain low-level camera software, including sensor drivers, board configuration, and camera subsystem integration across hardware revisions. Enable and validate core capture paths for development and production, including RAW capture for debugging, still capture, and hardware-

About the Team OpenAI’s Hardware organization develops AI-native silicon and system-level solutions for the unique demands of advanced AI workloads. Building on efforts like Jalapeño, the team is developing future generations of AI-native silicon and tightly integrated systems to power the next generation of frontier models. By co-designing chips, systems, tools, and methodologies, the team helps deliver faster, more efficient, and production-ready hardware for OpenAI’s supercomputing platform. About the Role We are looking for an embedded engineer to help build firmware and associated modeling software for OpenAI’s in house AI accelerator. This role involves designing and developing drivers and functional models for a large array of HW components, writing high throughput and low latency firmware code, investigating bring-up and production issues. Responsibilities Design and implement drivers for hardware peripherals, including those related to AI chips. Design and implement functional software models to simulate SoC uncore logic and enable FW testing against the model Design and implement low-latency and high throughput embedded SW to manage HW resources. Work with adjacent software and hardware teams to implement requirements, debug issues and shape future generations of the hardware. Collaborate with vendors to integrate their technologies within our systems. Bring up and debug firmware/driver on new platforms. Come up with processes and debug issues raised in the field. Set up monitoring, integration testing and diagnostics tools. Qualifications 5+ years of experience working in embedded SW space. Ability to thrive in ambiguity and learn new technologies. Strong programming skills in C/C++ and/or Rust. Experience developing high throughput, low latency and multi-threaded code. Experience working with real time operating systems (RTOS). Experience developing hardware drivers and working with hardware Experience with HW/SW co-design Knowledge of common embedded pr

About the team: OpenAI’s Hardware organization develops AI-native silicon and system-level solutions for the unique demands of advanced AI workloads. Building on efforts like Jalapeño, the team is developing future generations of AI-native silicon and tightly integrated systems to power the next generation of frontier models. By co-designing chips, systems, tools, and methodologies, the team helps deliver faster, more efficient, and production-ready hardware for OpenAI’s supercomputing platform. About the role: We are seeking an experienced Optical Network Engineer to lead Laser related work within our optical interconnect efforts for large-scale compute systems. The role also requires broad, hands-on optical validation experience across IM/DD-based interconnects, working from lab characterization through production readiness and scaled deployment. In this role you will: Drive laser-focused requirements and technical direction within the broader optical interconnect roadmap. Lead evaluation and validation of optical components and subsystems, including laser-based elements, in lab and production-representative environments. Support end-to-end optical testing for IM/DD interconnects (e.g., module/system bring-up, characterization, debug, and readiness for scale). Work with external partners to align on development milestones, performance targets, and quality expectations. Own technical issue triage and resolution across performance, reliability, and manufacturability topics. Collaborate across internal teams to support integration, rollout, and operational success at scale. You might thrive in this role if you have: Strong experience in laser-focused optical engineering (development, validation, manufacturing readiness, or field support). Broad hands-on background with IM/DD optical technologies and optical test/debug workflows. Experience working with external suppliers/manufacturing partners and production-oriented execution. Demonstrated ability to debug complex t

About the Team OpenAI’s 1P Hardware Systems team operates at the intersection of Hardware Engineering, Infrastructure, Supply Chain, Manufacturing, Deployment, and Finance to translate infrastructure demand into an executable systems plan. The Planning Lead connects system demand and deployment timing to site and configuration requirements, power availability, XPU needs, hardware supply commitments, manufacturing capacity, and site readiness. About the Role OpenAI is seeking a 1P Hardware Systems Planning Lead to own the integrated demand, supply, and deployment plan for our 1P AI infrastructure systems. This role will connect infrastructure demand and site power availability to system configurations, XPU requirements, and hardware supply commitments—creating a single, actionable view of whether our deployment plan can be met. You will establish the planning mechanisms that allow teams to see what changed, understand the impact, and act quickly when demand, supply, configuration, site readiness, or power timing moves. You will work across Hardware Engineering, Infrastructure, Supply Chain, Manufacturing, Deployment, Finance, and external partners to identify gaps early and drive recovery plans to closure. This is a highly cross-functional role for someone who combines systems-level thinking, strong analytical judgment, and rigorous program execution. The ideal candidate can turn complex and changing inputs into a clear operating plan, surface the decisions that matter, and drive accountability across teams without relying on formal authority. Success also requires strong communication judgment: the ability to align cross-functional teams, brief leadership at a concise and decision-oriented level, and go deep into the underlying assumptions, dependencies, risks, and recovery plans when needed. In this role, you will: Own the integrated planning process for 1P hardware systems, connecting system demand, deployment timing, site and configuration requirements, power ava

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 Performance Engineer to profile, benchmark, and optimize performance across our embedded hardware products. In this role, you will work across operating systems, applications, camera and vision, graphics, and platform teams to define product KPIs, build performance tooling, and drive optimizations from early lab characterization through product launch and real-world usage. You will help establish the performance standards that shape the user experience of our products, ensuring they remain responsive, efficient, and reliable throughout their lifecycle. This role requires deep expertise in embedded or high-performance systems, strong operating systems fundamentals, and hands-on experience debugging under tight latency, power, and memory constraints. 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: Develop system performance benchmarks, methodologies, and policies to evaluate end-to-end product behavior. Profile and analyze performance across key product use cases and workloads using custom and industry-standard profiling tools. Partner closely with engineering teams to identify bottlenecks and drive performance optimizations across the software stack. Define high-level product KPIs and establish measurement frameworks to measure launch readiness and monitor performance throughout the product lifecycle. Measure, re

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. The Systems Integration team is critical in this mission, turning complex hardware-software development into reliable product signals. We validate complete device experiences across software, cloud services, connectivity, accessories, and real-world operating environments, combining hands-on system testing, structured test development, hardware-in-the-loop environments, diagnostics, and automation to uncover issues that component-level testing alone cannot reveal. About the Role As a Systems Test Engineer, End-to-End Validation , you will design and execute end-to-end testing for complex device experiences spanning hardware, software, connectivity, cloud services, and accessories. You’ll translate product behavior and real-world use cases into structured, reproducible test procedures and build test environments that allow failures to be reliably reproduced and diagnosed. You’ll also identify opportunities to automate repetitive or high-value scenarios, working with engineers to turn complex manual workflows into scalable validation systems. Because this is a new category of devices, you’ll have the opportunity to build the end-to-end validation foundation early—shaping test coverage, environments, and workflows from prototype through launch. We’re looking for someone who combines strong systems thinking, hands-on testing skills, technical curiosi

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 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