Model Designer in San Francisco

About the Team The OpenAI Robotics team is focused on unlocking general-purpose robotics and pushing towards AGI-level intelligence in dynamic, real-world settings. Working across the entire model 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 constraints of physical systems to improve peoples’ lives. About the Role As a Senior Software Engineer, ML Systems & Training Infrastructure, you will be a deeply hands-on engineering force multiplier for the robotics team. You will help keep the training framework and surrounding infrastructure healthy, review and improve code quickly, debug failures across ML systems and infrastructure, and unblock researchers and engineers when the path from idea to working training job gets rough. We’re looking for people who love writing, reading, reviewing, and fixing code; who can get productive quickly in unfamiliar systems; and who bring strong practical judgment without a lot of ego or process overhead. This role will be based in San Francisco, CA and be expected in office 5 days per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees. In this role, you will: Review, improve, and clean up code across training frameworks and adjacent infrastructure. Identify risky or low-quality changes before they land, and raise the code quality bar without slowing the team down. Debug issues across ML training systems, GPUs, clusters, networking, and related infrastructure. Help researchers and engineers unblock broken training jobs, flaky workflows, and brittle internal tooling. Improve the reliability, maintainability, and usability of the robotics team’s training framework. Move quickly on practical engineering problems that directly affect team velocity. You might thrive in this role if you: Have strong software engineering fundamentals and excellent code review judgment. Have experience with ML systems, training fr

About the Team Our Robotics team is focused on unlocking general-purpose robotics and pushing towards AGI-level intelligence in dynamic, real-world settings. Working across the entire model 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 constraints of physical systems to improve peoples’ lives. About the Role We are seeking a Senior Actuator Design and Integration Engineer to lead the development of custom electromechanical actuators for advanced robotic systems. You will own actuator development from early architecture and concept generation through prototype validation and system integration, partnering closely with mechanical, electrical, controls, firmware, reliability, and manufacturing teams. This role focuses on the design, integration, and validation of precision electromechanical systems, including motors, transmissions, sensing, structural components, and thermal architectures. You will help drive actuator development across the full engineering lifecycle while establishing scalable design, test, and integration practices for future robotic platforms. This role is based in San Francisco, CA, and requires in-person presence 4 days a week. In this role, you will Lead the architecture, design, and integration of custom robotic actuators, including motors, transmissions, sensing, thermal systems, structural components, and packaging. Define actuator requirements and system-level trade studies around torque density, bandwidth, efficiency, thermal performance, backdrivability, inertia, reliability, manufacturability, and cost. Design precision electromechanical assemblies with strong attention to tolerances, alignment, load paths, thermal expansion, sealing, wear, and serviceability. Drive actuator integration into robotic systems, partnering closely with controls, firmware, electrical, and robotics software teams to optimize closed-loop pe

About the Team Frontier Systems Foundations, part of Compute Foundations at OpenAI, builds the systems software foundation that turns new compute infrastructure into reliable, usable capacity for frontier model training. Our mission is to make some of the world's largest GPU clusters work reliably for frontier training. We bring new platforms and clusters online, safely maintain installed fleets, and partner with hardware, infrastructure, and research teams to resolve the system-level issues that keep jobs from running. That means building and maintaining the software closest to the machine: Linux and Ubuntu operating-system images, kernels and modules, drivers, packages and repositories, disks and boot configuration, firmware integration, provisioning, and system-level validation. We make these components reproducible, compatible, and safe to operate across heterogeneous fleets. About the Role We are looking for systems software engineers with deep Linux and host-systems experience to build, qualify, and maintain the operating-system foundation for OpenAI's frontier compute fleet. Relevant backgrounds include kernel and module development, Linux distribution or image engineering, package management, firmware and driver integration, disks and boot, and bare-metal provisioning. You'll work closely with hardware engineers, vendors, and infrastructure teams to bring up new platforms, integrate system components, and debug failures across firmware, disks, boot, operating systems, kernels, drivers, and workload interactions. Your work will directly influence how quickly new capacity becomes usable and how reliably large GPU fleets operate. You should be comfortable writing and maintaining production-quality systems software and automation, but we do not expect expertise across every layer. This is an opportunity to go deep on challenging systems problems while building the image, package, qualification, and recovery paths that power the next generation of frontier models

About the Team Our Robotics team is focused on unlocking general-purpose robotics and pushing towards AGI-level intelligence in dynamic, real-world settings. Working across the entire model 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 constraints of physical systems to improve peoples’ lives. About the Role We are seeking a Senior Mechanical Engineer to lead the design, integration, and sustaining engineering of mechanical subsystems in robotic platforms. You will work closely with experienced engineers and cross-functional partners to set functional requirements, develop and iterate on hardware to meet program expectations. This role is aimed at candidates with strong fundamentals in mechanical system design — including tolerance, alignment, load paths, wear, and failure modes — and robotics. You will contribute to real hardware programs moving from prototype through early production. You will lead both new subsystem development and ongoing improvements to existing systems based on testing, field performance, and manufacturing feedback. This role is based in San Francisco, CA, and requires in-person presence 4 days a week. In this role, you will Lead the design and iteration of mechanical subsystems, including structures, mechanisms, and actuators. Create and maintain CAD models, assemblies, and drawings with appropriate tolerancing and documentation. Build and test prototypes, supporting debugging of mechanical issues such as fit, alignment, friction, and wear. Assist in developing test methods and executing validation to evaluate performance, durability, and failure modes. Work with cross-functional teams to integrate mechanical components with sensors, actuators, and control systems. Support transition of designs from prototype to manufacturable assemblies, incorporating DFM and DFA considerations. Collaborate with manufacturing partners

About the Team The Interpretability team studies internal representations of deep learning models. We are interested in using representations to understand model behavior, and in engineering models to have more understandable representations. We are particularly interested in applying our understanding to ensure the safety of powerful AI systems. Our working style is collaborative and curiosity-driven. About the Role OpenAI is seeking a researcher passionate about understanding deep networks, with a strong background in engineering, quantitative reasoning, and the research process. You will develop and carry out a research plan in mechanistic interpretability, in close collaboration with a highly motivated team. You will play a critical role in helping OpenAI ensure future models remain safe even as they grow in capability. This will make a significant impact on our goal of building and deploying safe AGI. In this role, you will: Develop and publish research on techniques for understanding representations of deep networks. Engineer infrastructure for studying model internals at scale. Collaborate across teams to work on projects that OpenAI is uniquely suited to pursue. Guide research directions toward demonstrable usefulness and/or long-term scalability. You might thrive in this role if you: Are excited about OpenAI’s mission of ensuring AGI benefits all of humanity, and are aligned with OpenAI’s charter . Show enthusiasm for long-term AI safety, and have thought deeply about technical paths to safe AGI. Bring experience in the field of AI safety, mechanistic interpretability, or spiritually related disciplines. Hold a Ph.D. or have research experience in computer science, machine learning, or a related field. Thrive in environments involving large-scale AI systems, and are excited to make use of OpenAI’s unique resources in this area. Possess 2+ years of research engineering experience and proficiency in Python or similar languages. Are deeply curious. About OpenA

About the Team Our Robotics team is focused on unlocking general-purpose robotics and pushing towards AGI-level intelligence in dynamic, real-world settings. Working across the entire model 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 constraints of physical systems to improve peoples’ lives. About the Role We are seeking a Mechanical Engineer to design and prototype novel tactile, proprioceptive and force sensor solutions. You will work closely with experienced engineers and cross-functional partners to set functional requirements, develop and iterate on hardware to meet program expectations. This role is aimed at candidates with strong fundamentals in mechanical system design and robotic sensing including tactile sensors, force sensing and position sensing. You will contribute to real hardware programs moving from prototype through early production. You will lead both new sensor subsystem development and ongoing improvements to existing systems based on testing, field performance, and manufacturing feedback. This role is based in San Francisco, CA, and requires in-person presence 4 days a week. In this role, you will Lead the design and iteration of mechanical subsystems, including tactile sensors, load cells, force torque sensors and joint encoders. Create and maintain CAD models, assemblies, and drawings with appropriate tolerancing and documentation. Build and test prototypes, supporting debugging of mechanical issues such as fit, alignment, friction, and wear. Assist in developing test methods and executing validation to evaluate performance, durability, calibration and failure modes. Work with cross-functional teams to integrate mechanical components with sensors, actuators, and control systems. Support transition of designs from prototype to manufacturable assemblies, incorporating DFM and DFA considerations. Collaborate with manufact

About the Team The OpenAI Robotics team is focused on unlocking general-purpose robotics and pushing towards AGI-level intelligence in dynamic, real-world settings. Working across the entire model 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 constraints of physical systems to improve peoples’ lives. About the Role As a Software Engineer, Distributed Data Systems, you will design, build, and operate some of the largest distributed data systems in the world. You will be responsible for the end-to-end stack to deliver and consume top-quality data for robotics training at exabyte-scale. You’ll manage distributed data pipelines, collaborate closely with researchers to translate requirements into robust systems, and harden pipelines that serve as the backbone for OpenAI’s rapid iteration cycles. We’re looking for engineers who are detail-oriented, have strong experience with distributed systems, and excel at building reliable, large-scale systems in high-stakes environments. 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, build, and maintain data infrastructure such as exabyte-scale distributed data processing, data selection, automated labeling, and training data loaders. Ensure our data platform can scale by orders of magnitude while remaining reliable and efficient. Partner with researchers to deeply understand requirements and translate them into production-ready systems. Harden, optimize, and maintain critical data infrastructure systems that power multimodal training and evaluation. Deliver the best possible data for training robotics models. You might thrive in this role if you: Have strong experience with distributed systems and large-scale infrastructure with a strong interest in data. Are detail-oriented a

About the Team Our Robotics team is focused on unlocking general-purpose robotics and pushing towards AGI-level intelligence in dynamic, real-world settings. Working across the entire model 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 constraints of physical systems to improve peoples’ lives. About the Role We're seeking talented Robotics Software Engineers to expand our robotics data collection and evaluation program. This highly technical role involves designing, implementing, and optimizing software solutions across diverse robotics hardware. You'll work closely and collaboratively with multidisciplinary teams; including software, hardware, research, and operations - to drive advancements in our robotic systems. This role is based in San Francisco, CA, and requires in-person 4 days a week. In this role, you will: Help develop and grow our data collection labs, owning the entire integration lifecycle, from identifying and sourcing new hardware to collaborating with mechanical and electrical engineers on setup, software integration, and operational deployment. Develop innovative robot control interfaces suited to a variety of morphologies, environments, and tasks. Collaborate closely with research and engineering teams to develop automation tools and machinery that facilitate the evaluation of advanced robotic policies. Lead the design and implementation of data collection, visualization, and quality control processes. You might thrive in this role if you: Have 5+ years of professional software engineering experience developing and shipping production-quality systems in robotics or hardware-integrated environments. Have extensive experience integrating and deploying industrial automation systems, off-the-shelf robotics platforms, or custom hardware into production environments. Bring hands-on experience delivering production-quality software

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 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 Role We're a growing hardware company. As we scale, we also need a supply chain that evolves and stays nimble to the changing shape and direction our engineers designs. Today we need someone who understands the iterative process of R&D but is also ready to expand into new product introduction (NPI), and after that, high-volume manufacturing. We're hiring for where we're headed, not just where we are today. This role prioritizes judgment, adaptability, and analytical ability over years of experience alone. A strong candidate will be able to reason from first principles, quickly develop expertise in new commodities, and identify potential commercial or technical issues before they affect the program. While extensive tenure is not required, this is not an entry-level position; candidates should have a solid foundation in strategic sourcing, supplier management, and hardware manufacturing. Over time, you'll help us build out a full supply chain organization: buyers, global supply managers (GSMs), contract manufacturing leads, and specialists across categories like precision machining, gears and mechanical components, EMS/PCBA, electrical components, and contract/JDM manufacturing. Where this role goes - into a specific commodity, into people management, into ops - will depend on where you're strongest and where the business needs you most. This role is based in San Francisco, CA and requires in-person presence 4 days a week and up to 30% travel to vendor sites. In this role you will: Partner directly with engineering during R&

About the Team Our Robotics team is focused on unlocking general-purpose robotics and pushing towards AGI-level intelligence in dynamic, real-world settings. Working across the entire model 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 constraints of physical systems to improve peoples’ lives. About the Role We are hiring a Sim Infrastructure Engineer to turn simulation systems into reliable, automated, production-quality pipelines that power model training, evaluation, and hardware-in-the-loop validation. This role owns the automation, orchestration, and tool integration that apply simulation to concrete robotics tasks: building CI/CD for SIL/HIL, presubmit checks, automatic model evaluation, metric computation and reporting, and the runtime infrastructure to run simulations at scale. You will collaborate closely with Sim Realism, Sim Environments, Research, and Ops to make simulation an integrated, reproducible, and measurable part of our ML and robotics workflows. This role is based in San Francisco, CA, and requires in-person 4 days a week. In this role, you will: Build and maintain presubmit checks, continuous integration and deployment pipelines for simulation code, environments, and tasks so simulation artifacts are testable, versioned, and reproducible. Implement end-to-end automation to run model evaluation in sim (SIL) and orchestrate HIL runs; compute realism and task metrics, generate dashboards and alerts, and ensure evaluation is repeatable and auditable. Create robust APIs and connectors so research, training, and data-collection systems can schedule, seed, and evaluate batches of simulations; support RL rollouts, imitation-data collection, and presubmit model checks. Build scheduling, batching and orchestration for running very large numbers of concurrent rollouts (target tens of thousands of rollouts / large RL workloads), sol

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 Our Robotics team is focused on unlocking general-purpose robotics and pushing towards AGI-level intelligence in dynamic, real-world settings. Working across the entire model 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 constraints of physical systems to improve peoples’ lives. About the Role We’re looking for a GPU Inference Engineer to contribute to improvements in model serving efficiency for our Robotics research. This is a high-impact role where you’ll drive initiatives to optimize inference performance and scalability. You’ll also be engaged in model design, to help assist our researchers in developing inference-friendly models. This role is critical to scaling the team’s broader goals - it will directly enable leadership to focus on higher-leverage initiatives by building a stronger technical foundation. In this role you will: Perform engineering efforts focused on improving model serving, inference performance, and system efficiency Drive optimizations from a kernel and data movement perspective to improve system throughput and reliability Partner closely with research and product teams to ensure our models perform effectively at scale Design, build, and improve critical serving infrastructure to support Robotics growth and reliability needs You might thrive in this role if you: Have deep expertise in model performance optimization, particularly at the inference layer Have a strong background in kernel-level systems, data movement, and low-level performance tuning Are excited about scaling high-performing AI systems that serve real-world, multimodal workloads Can navigate ambiguity, set technical direction, and drive complex initiatives to completion 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. About OpenAI OpenAI i

About the Team Our Robotics team is focused on unlocking general-purpose robotics and pushing towards AGI-level intelligence in dynamic, real-world settings. Working across the entire model 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 constraints of physical systems to improve peoples' lives. About the Role You will work at the cutting edge of OpenAI's robotics hardware, partnering with hardware and software teams to develop, build, test, and iterate on robotic systems. Working closely with engineers, you will build prototypes, execute experiments, fabricate fixtures, troubleshoot hardware, and help drive rapid iteration on new robotic technologies. Your practical problem-solving and technical judgment will help move projects from concept to reality. We are looking for versatile, hands-on generalists who enjoy solving problems across mechanical, electrical, fabrication, and experimental domains. The ideal candidate will have strong experience in high-velocity and early-stage hardware development environments, provide thoughtful feedback to engineering teams, and help improve both hardware and development processes. This role will help accelerate robotics development by enabling fast, high-quality iteration on new hardware concepts and systems. This role is based in San Francisco, CA, and is in-person 5 days a week. In this role, you will: Partner closely with engineers, researchers, and other members of the robotics team to support prototype development, experimentation, and hardware iteration. Build, modify, troubleshoot, and repair robotic systems and electromechanical assemblies spanning structural, electrical, sensing, and actuation subsystems. Design and fabricate fixtures, adapters, test equipment, and other prototype hardware that accelerate development efforts. Execute low-volume builds, engineering changes, and rework activities acro

About the Team Our Robotics team is focused on unlocking general-purpose robotics and pushing towards AGI-level intelligence in dynamic, real-world settings. Working across the entire model 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 constraints of physical systems to improve peoples’ lives. About the Role We are seeking a Mechanical Engineer to lead the engineering, characterization, and productionization of flexible and compliant components in robotic platforms. You will partner closely with cross-functional teams to translate material concepts into engineered subsystems that meet functional, durability, and manufacturing requirements. This role focuses on understanding how soft materials behave in dynamic mechanical systems — including fatigue, creep, hysteresis, wear, and environmental degradation — and designing assemblies that perform consistently at scale. You will work with materials such as elastomers, foams, thermoplastic polyurethanes (TPUs), engineered fabrics, knitted and woven textiles, cables, and other flexible load-bearing or transmission elements, integrating them with rigid hardware, sensors, and actuators using fabrication methods such as bonding, molding, lamination, and sewn assemblies. This role is based in San Francisco, CA, and requires in-person presence 4 days a week. In this role, you will Design and integrate compliant or flexible materials into mechanical subsystems and rigid hardware interfaces. Leverage FEA tools to characterize material behavior under operational loads, including tension, compression, abrasion, fatigue, and environmental exposure. Develop test methods and validation protocols to evaluate durability, performance, and failure modes of soft components. Collaborate with cross-functional teams to transition early prototypes into manufacturable designs. Source and evaluate materials in collaboratio