Camera Software Engineer, Consumer Devices

Details

About the Team

The Consumer Products team at OpenAI builds end-to-end hardware and software systems that bring AI into the physical world. They 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, the role involves owning low-level camera enablement on custom hardware—from early board bring-up through stable production capture. The engineer 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. The engineer 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, and follows a hybrid work model with four days per week in the office. Relocation assistance is offered 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-accelerated video encode and streaming with stable timestamps and long-duration reliability.
• Stand up camera control and repeatability features, including basic 3A loop exposure, manual overrides and locks, and deterministic presets to support validation and debugging.
• Build and maintain camera bring-up tooling, such as capture scripts, automated sweeps, manifests, and debugging utilities that make issues reproducible and easy to triage.
• Partner closely with electrical engineering, camera pipeline owners, and systems teams to define interfaces, unblock integration, and keep the camera stack stable as the device evolves.

Requirements

You might thrive in this role if you have:

• Deep experience shipping embedded camera systems, including sensor bring-up, driver development, and board-level debugging.
• Strong C/C++ experience with embedded or Linux-based systems; comfortable debugging across kernel and userspace boundaries.
• Hands-on understanding of common camera hardware interfaces (for example, MIPI CSI and sensor control buses) and practical realities of bring-up, including power, reset, clocking, and sequencing.
• Proven track record of building reliable capture paths and effective debug workflows that accelerate iteration through reproducible failures and well-scoped fixes.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with common mobile or embedded SoC camera stacks and vendor frameworks.
• Experience integrating and debugging hardware acceleration blocks adjacent to camera pipelines, such as video encode and decode paths.
• Familiarity building higher-level capture pipelines (for example, GStreamer) on top of low-level camera enablement.

Compensation and Benefits

Base pay range: $293K–$325K (offers equity). The base pay may vary based on individualized factors including market location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. If the role is non-exempt, overtime pay will be provided consistent with applicable laws.

Benefits include medical, dental, and vision insurance (with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts), pre-tax accounts for Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and commuter expenses, a 401(k) plan with employer match, paid parental leave and paid medical/caregiver leave, paid time off (flexible PTO for exempt employees and up to 15 days annually for non-exempt employees), paid company holidays and office closures, paid sick or safe time, mental health and wellness support, employer-paid basic life and disability coverage, an annual learning and development stipend, daily meals in offices (and meal delivery credits as eligible), and relocation support for eligible employees.