Linux Kernel Engineer for Next-Gen Consumer Devices

OpenAI; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 230,000 - 385,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

Employer-paid health savings account

401(k) retirement plan with employer 


Paid parental leave

Flexible PTO

Paid holidays

Relocation support

Job summary

OpenAI Consumer Devices seeks an Operating Systems Engineer focused on the Linux kernel to design, develop, and maintain kernel capabilities underpinning our consumer devices. You will own features across the stack and shape kernel-userspace boundaries to deliver complete product features.

You’ll collaborate with hardware, firmware, and software teams, writing reviewable patches and contributing changes upstream where appropriate while maintaining product-specific changes as the kernel evolves.

Qualifications

• Substantial hands-on experience designing, developing, and debugging one or more Linux kernel subsystems, such as memory management, storage, networking, high-speed peripherals, power management, scheduling, or virtualization.
• Proficiency in C for kernel and low-level systems development.
• Strong understanding of kernel concurrency, synchronization, memory ownership, and resource lifetimes.
• Experience delivering systems capabilities across kernel and userspace, including designing interfaces and diagnosing problems that cross that boundary.
• Understanding of Linux kernel development principles and practices: maintainable designs, appropriate abstractions, reviewable patches, compatibility awareness, and careful validation to prevent regressions.

Responsibilities

• Build kernel capabilities: Design, implement, and maintain Linux kernel subsystem changes that support device capabilities and product requirements.
• Own features across the stack: Define kernel and userspace boundaries, and build the interfaces and supporting components needed to deliver reliable features in shipped products.
• Debug complex system behavior: Use tracing, profiling, instrumentation, and diagnostic tools to resolve correctness, concurrency, performance, power, and reliability issues in development and production.
• Measure and validate improvements: Develop tests and representative workloads to demonstrate repeatable performance, power, and reliability gains and detect regressions across kernel and userspace.
• Partner across disciplines: Work with hardware, firmware, platform, and application engineers to turn system requirements into understandable, maintainable solutions.
• Contribute sustainable kernel changes: Prepare reviewable patches, incorporate feedback, and contribute fixes and improvements upstream where appropriate. Maintain product‑specific changes responsibly as the kernel evolves.

Skills

Linux kernel

C programming

Kernel concurrency

Userspace interfaces

Performance debugging

Tools

Rust

Code review

Job description

OpenAI Consumer Devices seeks an Operating Systems Engineer focused on the Linux kernel to design, develop, and maintain kernel capabilities underpinning our consumer devices. You will own features across the stack and shape kernel-userspace boundaries to deliver complete product features.

You’ll collaborate with hardware, firmware, and software teams, writing reviewable patches and contributing changes upstream where appropriate while maintaining product-specific changes as the kernel evolves.