Systems Software Engineer, Management Plane

at OpenAI

📍 San Francisco, United States

USD 266,000-445,000 per year

SENIOR

✅ Hybrid

✅ Relocation

Tech Stack
Tag name is followed by "@" symbol and proficiency level value. About proficiency levels:

1-2 — basic awareness. Minimal hands-on experience, and a rudimentary understanding of the technology's purpose;

3-6 — daily use. Comfortable and regular usage, capable of handling common tasks and challenges related to the technology;

7-9 — you are an expert, you can teach others, you know all the pitfalls and tricks;

10 — exceptional knowledge, comprehensive understanding, and adeptness in all aspects of the technology, including advanced problem-solving. Think twice before claiming or demanding such level.

AI Linux @ 4 Networking @ 4 Rust @ 7 Security

Details

OpenAI's Hardware organization develops AI-native silicon and system-level solutions for advanced AI workloads. The First-Party Hardware team is seeking a Systems Software Engineer to design, build, integrate, and validate low-level system software for the manageability and health of first-party AI hardware systems.

The role covers BMC, Linux, firmware interfaces, automation infrastructure, boot and recovery, hardware diagnostics, telemetry, host and platform drivers, network software interfaces, and manufacturing and fleet readiness. It also owns the acceptance path for partner-delivered system software, including requirements definition, code and artifact review, reproducible builds, testing, issue resolution, and launch-readiness evidence.

Responsibilities

Design, develop, and maintain low-level firmware and system software for AI hardware manageability, including BMC software, Redfish services, gNMI telemetry, firmware update and recovery flows, BIOS/UEFI interactions, platform drivers, and hardware diagnostics.
Own integration and acceptance of partner and vendor software releases, including requirements, code and artifact review, reproducible builds, CI, regression monitoring, version tracking, acceptance criteria, and launch-readiness evidence.
Build and maintain automation and CI infrastructure for testing and managing systems in the lab.
Define and debug hardware management protocols across accelerators, host systems, management controllers, firmware, and platform services, including I2C, SMBus, PMBus, PCIe, Ethernet, GPIO, UART, and JTAG.
Build system health monitoring, telemetry, remote diagnostics, and recovery paths for lab, manufacturing, and production data-center environments.
Develop validation and test automation for board bring-up, rack bring-up, qualification, manufacturing readiness, deployment readiness, and long-term reliability.
Convert engineering releases into manufacturing-ready software recipes, including images, versions, logs, limits, remediation mapping, provisioning hooks, secure artifact handling, and traceable data export.
Debug production issues involving hardware signals, BMC firmware, BIOS/UEFI, kernel drivers, platform services, network topology, PCIe behavior, power, thermals, boot, provisioning, and manufacturing tests.
Collaborate with hardware, firmware, security, networking, infrastructure, manufacturing, operations, and external engineering teams to define software contracts, unblock bring-up, and resolve issues.
Produce architecture notes, runbooks, validation records, and decision documents.

Requirements

7+ years of hands-on experience, or equivalent exceptional accomplishments, in low-level system software, embedded software, firmware, BMC software, platform software, device drivers, or hardware diagnostics.
Strong programming skills in C, C++, Rust, or similar systems languages, with experience building reliable software for real hardware.
Experience with Linux-based hardware platforms, embedded Linux, OpenBMC, Redfish, BMCWeb, IPMI boundaries, BIOS/UEFI, bootloaders, firmware update systems, kernel drivers, RTOS, or fleet management software.
Strong knowledge of hardware/software interfaces such as I2C, SMBus, PMBus, SPI, PCIe, Ethernet, USB, UART, GPIO, JTAG, power controllers, board-level debug tools, or protocol analyzers.
Ability to debug live hardware using logs, packet captures, firmware traces, bus captures, lab hosts, BMC journals, Linux tooling, and controlled experiments.
Experience with hardware bring-up, manufacturing or qualification testing, system diagnostics, release validation, or deployment of high-performance compute, accelerator, server, networking, storage, or embedded platforms.
Ability to reason across software, firmware, hardware, manufacturing, and operations boundaries and turn ambiguous problems into requirements, designs, tests, and decisions.
Experience working with external vendors, manufacturing partners, or partner engineering teams.
Familiarity with secure boot, firmware signing, device provisioning, attestation, certificate handling, trusted update flows, or access-control design is a plus.
Candidates may need to meet certain legal status requirements under U.S. export control laws and regulations.

Benefits

Equity, medical, dental, and vision insurance.
Health Savings Accounts, flexible spending accounts, commuter benefits, and a 401(k) plan with employer match.
Paid parental, medical, caregiver, vacation, holiday, sick, and safe leave.
Mental health and wellness support, life and disability coverage, and an 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.