Workload Porting And Performance Engineer in San Francisco

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 develop and evolve the tooling ecosystem that hardware engineers rely on every day — from hardware compilers and IR transformations to simulation, debugging, and automation infrastructure. The work spans software engineering, compiler concepts, and practical hardware workflows, with direct impact on how quickly and effectively we design next-generation AI systems. You’ll collaborate closely with architects, RTL designers, and verification engineers to translate real engineering friction into durable, scalable tooling solutions. In this role you will: Build and improve the software tooling that makes hardware teams faster: compilation, IR transforms, RTL generation, simulation, debug, and automation. Extend and integrate hardware compiler stacks (frontends, IR passes, lowering, scheduling, codegen to Verilog/SystemVerilog) and connect them to real design workflows. Improve developer experience and reliability: reproducible builds, better error messages, faster iteration loops, and dependable CI and regression infrastructure. Work closely with designers and verification engineers to turn real pain points into durable tools. Dive into RTL when needed: read and reason about Verilog/SystemVerilog to debug issues, validate tool output, and improve debuggability. Be willing to go all the way down the stack when necessary, including gate-level views, synthesis results, and implementation artifacts. Help enable PPA optimization loops by building analysis and au

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 a Operations Program Manager (OPM) to serve as the single-threaded operational leader for new hardware introductions (NPI) and production ramps across OpenAI’s AI infrastructure systems. This role combines hands-on execution with strategic ownership. You will be responsible for defining the operating model, aligning cross-functional stakeholders, setting the critical path, making informed tradeoffs, escalating decisively, and ensuring hardware programs deliver on schedule, quality, cost, and scalability. Success in this role requires comfort operating in ambiguity, influencing without authority, and driving alignment across internal teams and external partners—while keeping eyes firmly on long-term system scalability and repeatability. In this role, you will: Strategic & Leadership Ownership Act as the single-threaded owner for operational readiness across NPI and ramp, accountable for outcomes from early bring-up through sustained production Translate OpenAI’s infrastructure strategy and engineering objectives into clear operating plans, execution priorities, and decision frameworks Drive alignment across Engineering, Operations, Strategic Sourcing, Finance, Capacity Planning, and Executive stakeholders by framing tradeoffs, risks, and recommendations Proactively identify inflection points where decisions or investments are required to protect long-term scale, reliability, or cost targets Influence operational strategy with manufacturing par

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 As an Engineer on our hardware optimization and co-design team, you will co-design future hardware from different vendors for programmability and performance. You will work with our kernel, compiler and machine learning engineers to understand their unique needs related to ML techniques, algorithms, numerical approximations, programming expressivity, and compiler optimizations. You will evangelize these constraints with various vendors to develop and influence future hardware architectures towards efficient training and inference on our models. If you are excited about efficiently distributing a large language model across devices, dealing with and optimizing system-wide/rack-wide networking bottlenecks and eventually tailoring the compute pipe and memory hierarchy of the hardware platform, simulating workloads at different abstractions and working closely with our partners, this is the perfect opportunity! 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. Key Responsibilities Co-design future hardware for programmability and performance with our hardware vendors Assist hardware vendors in developing optimal kernels and add support for it in our compiler Develop performance estimates for critical kernels for different hardware configurations and drive decisions on compute core and memory h

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 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’re looking for signal integrity (SI) system design engineers who have a deep expertise in the SI area, and hold strong system level design knowledge 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: Lead system signal integrity (SI) design for AI supercomputer product in the data center application. Collaborate with chip, package, boards, rack and system engineers, design partners to drive system SI design and develop innovative interconnect and high-speed technologies Identify and evaluate new technologies and methodologies to improve signal and power integrity in product design, and contribute to the development of new products and technology by providing expertise in signal integrity Perform simulation and modeling to identify and troubleshoot signal integrity issues Lead system interconnect design, bring up and qualification As the scope of the role and team grows, understand and influence roadmaps for hardware partners for our datacenter networks, racks, and buildings. You might thrive in this role if you: Have at least 10 years of industry experience, including experience design hardware system and SerDes testing for data center applications Have a strong bias toward action, and won’t take no for an answer. Have experience and good knowledge of system design experience in the SI areas, from chip, SerDes, board, rack level Have ex

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 OpenAI is developing custom silicon to power the next generation of frontier AI models. We’re looking for experienced Design Verification (DV) Engineers to ensure functional correctness and robust design for our cutting-edge ML accelerators. You will play a key role in verifying complex hardware systems—ranging from individual IP blocks to subsystems and full SoC—working closely with architecture, RTL, software, and systems teams to deliver reliable silicon at scale. In this role you will: Own the verification of one or more of: custom IP blocks, subsystems (compute, interconnect, memory, etc.), or full-chip SoC-level functionality. Define verification plans based on architecture and microarchitecture specs. Develop constrained-random, directed, and system-level testbenches using SystemVerilog/UVM or equivalent methodologies. Build and maintain stimulus generators, checkers, monitors, and scoreboards to ensure high coverage and correctness. Drive bug triage, root cause analysis, and work closely with design teams on resolution. Contribute to regression infrastructure, coverage analysis, and closure for both block- and top-level environments. You might thrive in this role if you have: BS/MS in EE/CE/CS or equivalent with 3+ years of experience in hardware verification. Proven success verifying complex IP or SoC designs in industry-standard flows Proficient in SystemVerilog, UVM, and common simulation and debug tools (e.g., VCS, Questa, Verdi). Strong knowledge

About the Team OpenAI’s Hardware organization develops system and infrastructure solutions designed for the unique demands of advanced AI workloads. We work closely with architecture, infrastructure, and vendor teams to evaluate system performance and guide critical design decisions. Our team focuses on building and applying performance modeling frameworks to understand system behavior, quantify tradeoffs, and support next-generation infrastructure design. About the Role We are seeking an Performance Modeling Engineer to support the development and application of modeling tools used to evaluate AI system performance and inform architectural decisions. In this role, you will partner closely with Senior Performance Modeling Engineers and the Performance Modeling Lead to analyze system behavior, run simulations and analytical models, and help evaluate tradeoffs across compute, memory, networking, and storage. You will contribute to building modeling frameworks while developing a strong foundation in system architecture and AI infrastructure. This role is ideal for early-career engineers with 1–2 years of experience in software engineering, systems analysis, or performance modeling who are excited to grow in large-scale infrastructure and hardware/software systems. 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. Key Responsibilities Support the development and maintenance of performance modeling tools and frameworks Assist in building models to evaluate system behavior across compute, memory, networking, and interconnect subsystems Help analyze distributed system scaling behavior and identify performance bottlenecks Run simulations and analytical models to support architecture and infrastructure decisions Partner with senior engineers to evaluate design tradeoffs across hardware and system components Interpret modeling outputs and help translate findings into clear recommendations Vali

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 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 SoC Architect to lead the definition and development of next-generation custom AI silicon for edge deployments. This role will be responsible for shaping the architecture of highly efficient, high-performance SoCs optimized for machine learning inference and on-device intelligence. You will work cross-functionally with internal engineering teams and external ecosystem partners to translate product requirements into scalable silicon solutions, driving execution from concept through delivery. In this role you will: Define the architecture and technical roadmap for custom SoCs targeted for edge applications. Drive system-level tradeoff analysis across compute, memory, interconnect, power, thermal, and cost constraints. Architect energy-efficient ML compute subsystems optimized for inference workloads and real-world deployment environments. Collaborate with internal hardware, software, systems, and product teams to align architecture with platform needs. Partner with external silicon vendors, IP providers, and manufacturing partners to execute development plans. Lead hardware/software co-design efforts to maximize performance per watt and end-to-end system efficiency. Guide implementation teams through microarchitecture, RTL development, validation, and bring-up phases. Operate effectively in agile development environments and help teams deliver against aggressive schedules and milestones. You might thrive in this role if: Proven exper

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 a systems-minded engineer to help advance our kernel development, performance engineering, and hardware-software co-design capabilities, with a particular focus on AI-assisted workflows and tooling. This person will work at the intersection of kernel optimization, developer tooling, observability, and research infrastructure, helping us improve both how production kernels are built and optimized, and how future hardware-software systems are designed and evaluated. The role is ideal for someone who is excited by low-level performance work, but also sees AI and automation as powerful tools for accelerating engineering velocity. You will help define the future of kernel engineering in the era of AI-assisted development. In this role, you may: Build developer tooling and workflows that make kernel development and performance optimization faster, more scalable, and easier to debug, integrate, and deploy. Develop observability, diagnostics, and validation infrastructure that makes AI-assisted optimization systems more interpretable, reliable, and effective. Optimize production kernels end to end by formulating optimization problems, running search loops, analyzing bottlenecks, debugging generated implementations, and landing improvements into production. Design abstractions, interfaces, and automation systems that accelerate kernel optimization, correctness validation, and hardware-software co-design. Improve AI-assisted optimization systems for sp

About Us: AI needs a new infrastructure layer. We're building it at Modal. Every era of computing brought new workloads that previous infrastructure couldn't support: mainframes, databases, and the cloud. Each time, the company that rebuilt the layer underneath defined the decade. AI is no different, except it touches everything instead of one slice, and the window to build the layer underneath it is open right now. Our customers include category-defining companies like Lovable , Ramp , Cognition, DoorDash, and Suno. They rely on Modal for instant GPU access, sub-second container starts, and native storage, so it's simple to serve low-latency inference, fine-tune models, and access production-ready sandboxes at scale. We recently raised a $355M Series C at a $4.65B valuation, led by General Catalyst and Redpoint Ventures. We've crossed $300M+ ARR and grown fivefold since September. Our team includes creators of popular open-source projects (e.g., Seaborn , Luig i ), academic researchers, international olympiad medalists, and experienced engineering and product leaders with decades of experience. The Role: We are looking for strong engineers with experience and interest in designing, building, and maintaining the novel, high-performance systems that make up our serverless platform. Specifically, you'll be working on Modal's machines layer: the fleet of bare metal and cloud hosts that every Function, Sandbox, and training job runs on, and the control plane that provisions, images, monitors, and repairs them. You'll automate the integration of new capacity from a growing set of hardware providers; from auditing and benchmarking hosts and clusters, to maintaining our machine images, configuring GPUs, RDMA, networking, and storage, and getting machines into production. You'll build the automation that keeps the fleet healthy without human intervention: detecting bad GPUs, thermals, and disks. You'll dig into whatever is between the hardware and the software that runs on

About Us: AI needs a new infrastructure layer. We're building it at Modal. Every era of computing brought new workloads that previous infrastructure couldn't support: mainframes, databases, and the cloud. Each time, the company that rebuilt the layer underneath defined the decade. AI is no different, except it touches everything instead of one slice, and the window to build the layer underneath it is open right now. Our customers include category-defining companies like Lovable , Ramp , Cognition, DoorDash, and Suno. They rely on Modal for instant GPU access, sub-second container starts, and native storage, so it's simple to serve low-latency inference, fine-tune models, and access production-ready sandboxes at scale. We recently raised a $355M Series C at a $4.65B valuation, led by General Catalyst and Redpoint Ventures. We've crossed $300M+ ARR and grown fivefold since September. Our team includes creators of popular open-source projects (e.g., Seaborn , Luig i ), academic researchers, international olympiad medalists, and experienced engineering and product leaders with decades of experience. The Role: We are looking for strong engineers with experience and interest in designing, building, and maintaining the novel, high-performance systems that make up our serverless platform. Specifically, you'll be working on the distributed object storage system that underpins every container image, volume, and checkpoint on Modal: hundreds of petabytes of data, replicated across multiple cloud object stores and a CDN, cached on local NVMe across a large fleet of workers in many datacenters, and shared peer-to-peer within each datacenter. You'll make cold starts feel local when the data is hundreds of milliseconds away, designing the caching, preloading, and peer-to-peer layers that hide object-store latency and keep public ingress off saturated uplinks. You'll own durability and cost at petabyte scale, from streaming and batch replication between origins, to garbage collecti

About Us: AI needs a new infrastructure layer. We're building it at Modal. Every era of computing brought new workloads that previous infrastructure couldn't support: mainframes, databases, and the cloud. Each time, the company that rebuilt the layer underneath defined the decade. AI is no different, except it touches everything instead of one slice, and the window to build the layer underneath it is open right now. Our customers include category-defining companies like Lovable , Ramp , Cognition, DoorDash, and Suno. They rely on Modal for instant GPU access, sub-second container starts, and native storage, so it's simple to serve low-latency inference, fine-tune models, and access production-ready sandboxes at scale. We recently raised a $355M Series C at a $4.65B valuation, led by General Catalyst and Redpoint Ventures. We've crossed $300M+ ARR and grown fivefold since September. Our team includes creators of popular open-source projects (e.g., Seaborn , Luig i ), academic researchers, international olympiad medalists, and experienced engineering and product leaders with decades of experience. The Role: We are looking for a strong technical lead to guide the engineers designing, building, and maintaining the novel, high-performance systems that make up our serverless platform. You'll lead the team responsible for the distributed object storage system that underpins every container image, volume, and checkpoint on Modal: hundreds of petabytes of data, replicated across multiple cloud object stores and a CDN, cached on local NVMe across a large fleet of workers in many datacenters, and shared peer-to-peer within each datacenter. You'll set technical direction for the primitives that other teams (filesystems, training, sandboxes) build on, balancing durability, latency, throughput, and cost. You'll own the roadmap from today's hardest problems (garbage collection at petabyte scale, active-active replication, rate limiting that protects the upstream without wasting ut

About Us: AI needs a new infrastructure layer. We're building it at Modal. Every era of computing brought new workloads that previous infrastructure couldn't support: mainframes, databases, and the cloud. Each time, the company that rebuilt the layer underneath defined the decade. AI is no different, except it touches everything instead of one slice, and the window to build the layer underneath it is open right now. Our customers include category-defining companies like Lovable , Ramp , Cognition, DoorDash, and Suno. They rely on Modal for instant GPU access, sub-second container starts, and native storage, so it's simple to serve low-latency inference, fine-tune models, and access production-ready sandboxes at scale. We recently raised a $355M Series C at a $4.65B valuation, led by General Catalyst and Redpoint Ventures. We've crossed $300M+ ARR and grown fivefold since September. Our team includes creators of popular open-source projects (e.g., Seaborn , Luig i ), academic researchers, international olympiad medalists, and experienced engineering and product leaders with decades of experience. The Role Modal's LLM inference platform delivers frontier performance for open-source models with best-in-class elasticity and developer experience, made in part possible by our custom runtime with GPU memory snapshots and multi-cloud substrate . We're looking for a leader to own the direction and execution of this platform to continue to establish us as the clear market leader, working closely with customers like Cognition, Doordash, Ramp, and many more. You'll be leading a group of highly talented engineers working on our market-leading LLM inference offering, spanning the serving stack, routing infrastructure, internal agentic optimization platform, and the user-facing product surface area. This is a hands-on leadership role — expect to split your time between technical contribution, product shaping and people management depending on what the team needs. You'll set direct