Research Engineer, AI for Chip Design

Details

OpenAI develops models that can reason through complex problems and hardware designed for advanced AI. The AI for Chips team applies increasingly capable AI systems to semiconductor engineering, helping engineers develop better chips and shorten design cycles through research, model training, and hardware-aware tools.

The Research Engineer will help OpenAI models solve chip-design problems through reinforcement learning, tool use, and evaluation. The role involves owning experiments from initial concept through implementation and analysis, building environments and evaluations, running training, investigating failures, and developing reliable, reproducible research software. Prior chip-design experience is helpful but not required, as the domain can be learned alongside hardware specialists.

Responsibilities

• Build reinforcement learning environments and evaluations for tasks such as RTL generation, design verification, and physical design optimization.
• Develop and test approaches that help models use chip-design tools and improve power, performance, and area while preserving correctness.
• Design experiments, establish baselines, and measure whether improvements hold up on new tasks and designs.
• Investigate failures across model behavior, rewards, evaluation tools, and experiment infrastructure.
• Improve iteration speed through better tooling, faster evaluations, and proxy rewards that reflect desired outcomes.
• Turn successful experiments into reusable research code and training workflows while working closely with researchers and engineers.

Requirements

• Strong programming and debugging skills, with a track record of turning technical ideas into working software.
• Experience with reinforcement learning, model evaluations, post-training, or other applied machine learning research.
• Experience building tool-using agents, reward functions, or automated evaluation systems.
• Ability to form clear hypotheses, design useful experiments, and distinguish meaningful results from noise or evaluation errors.
• Ability to work independently on ambiguous problems and make practical decisions about what to build or test next.
• Ability to stay close to implementation and explain what was built, what failed, and what was learned.
• Clear communication and effective collaboration across research, software, and hardware teams.
• Interest in developing safe, beneficial AI.

Nice to Have

• Familiarity with experiment orchestration, distributed training, or research infrastructure.
• Experience with RTL, Verilog/SystemVerilog, EDA tools, formal verification, or chip-design automation.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance for employees and families, with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts.
• Pre-tax accounts for health and dependent care expenses, as well as commuter expenses.
• 401(k) retirement plan with employer match.
• Paid parental, medical, and caregiver leave.
• Paid time off, paid company holidays, office closures, and paid sick or safe time.
• Mental health and wellness support.
• Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage.
• Annual learning and development stipend.
• Daily office meals and eligible meal delivery credits.
• Relocation support for eligible employees.
• Additional benefits may include charitable donation matching and wellness stipends.

The position is hybrid and based in San Francisco. Candidates may need to meet certain legal status requirements under U.S. export control laws and regulations. OpenAI is an equal opportunity employer and provides reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities.