Software Engineer, AI for Chip Design

Details

OpenAI's AI for Chips team applies increasingly capable AI systems to semiconductor engineering. The team builds tools that help engineers develop better chips, shorten design cycles, and work with real chip designs while maintaining correctness and measurable performance.

The role focuses on building research infrastructure and tooling that enables OpenAI models to design silicon. This includes turning chip-design workflows into reliable environments for reinforcement learning and evaluation, integrating electronic design automation tools, and helping researchers run experiments and iterate on new ideas.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain infrastructure for reinforcement learning environments, evaluations, and long-running experiments.
• Integrate electronic design automation (EDA) tools into workflows for RTL generation, verification, and physical design optimization.
• Improve experiment reliability, reproducibility, observability, and performance.
• Debug failures across tools, services, and infrastructure.
• Develop tooling and model harnesses that enable researchers to test ideas quickly and measure correctness, power, performance, and area (PPA).
• Collaborate with researchers and engineers to turn successful experiments into reusable systems and training workflows.
• Own ambiguous projects end to end, communicate progress, and use results to guide future iterations.

Requirements

• Strong software engineering fundamentals, including experience designing, implementing, and debugging reliable systems.
• Ability to work across a technology stack, investigate unfamiliar failures, and make practical tradeoffs between speed, correctness, and maintainability.
• Experience independently delivering substantial software projects and explaining technical decisions and their impact.
• Comfort working with researchers on evolving requirements and turning open-ended problems into working software.
• Interest in learning how reinforcement learning and chip-design tools fit together.
• Commitment to developing safe, beneficial AI.

Nice to Have

• Experience with research infrastructure, distributed systems, experiment orchestration, or machine learning tooling.
• Familiarity with reinforcement learning, model evaluations, or training workflows.
• Experience with Python, containerized tools, and reproducible development environments.
• Experience with RTL, Verilog/SystemVerilog, EDA tools, formal verification, or chip-design automation.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance, 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 and paid company holidays.
• Mental health and wellness support.
• Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage.
• Annual learning and development stipend.
• Daily meals in offices and eligible meal delivery credits.
• Relocation support for eligible employees.
• Additional benefits may include charitable donation matching and wellness stipends.

OpenAI is an equal opportunity employer committed to reasonable accommodations and consideration of qualified applicants in accordance with applicable laws.