Senior OS Security Architect: Hardware-Backed Trust & AI Safety

United States Digital Space LLC; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 230,000 - 330,000; Full time

Job summary

OpenAI is seeking a senior Software Security Architect to define the security architecture for a next-generation operating system. You will work with hardware security architects and cross‑functional teams—OS, silicon, firmware, privacy, and product—to protect users, devices, and data.

This hands-on, senior role connects OS internals with hardware-backed security and product constraints, shaping trust models and the platform’s foundations for safe, private AI usage under user control.

Qualifications

• Deep experience designing or securing operating systems, kernels, embedded platforms, hypervisors, or other privileged systems software.
• Complex understanding of OS internals including memory protection, process isolation, executable loading, device drivers, and privilege boundaries.
• Experience building security architectures spanning hardware, firmware, OS, apps, and cloud services.

Responsibilities

• Define the operating system’s security architecture, trust boundaries, privilege model, and protections for sensitive user data.
• Partner with hardware security architects to integrate roots of trust, secure elements, trusted execution environments, and processor security capabilities into the OS.
• Design foundational platform defenses, including secure boot, code signing, attestation, secure updates, key protection, and device recovery.
• Establish isolation and access controls across the kernel, applications, system services, and AI workloads.
• Define guardrails for how AI applications and agents access information, use sensors and tools, retain context, and act on a user’s behalf.
• Lead threat modeling and architecture reviews across the platform, translating threats into requirements.
• Prototype solutions, review security-critical systems code, and guide engineering teams through complex tradeoffs.

Skills

OS security

Kernel internals

Threat modeling

Secure coding (C/C++, Rust)

Job description

OpenAI is seeking a senior Software Security Architect to define the security architecture for a next-generation operating system. You will work with hardware security architects and cross‑functional teams—OS, silicon, firmware, privacy, and product—to protect users, devices, and data.

This hands-on, senior role connects OS internals with hardware-backed security and product constraints, shaping trust models and the platform’s foundations for safe, private AI usage under user control.