Software Engineer, Silicon Design Methodology

OpenAI; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

OpenAI is seeking a software engineer to help build the design methodology, software abstractions, and infrastructure that enable a small silicon team to develop complex chips rapidly and with high confidence. You will turn evolving architecture and design needs into reusable tools and workflows that improve iteration speed, quality, and then apply those tools to help construct world-class silicon.

You’ll work closely across architecture, design, verification, performance modeling, and systems

Qualifications

• Strong software engineering skills in C++, Python, or Rust for systems programming.
• Experience building engineering infrastructure, developer tools, or simulation frameworks.
• Understanding of digital design and computer architecture to translate silicon-development needs into software abstractions.

Responsibilities

• Develop and scale design methodologies for rapid first-party chip development and apply them to construct complex custom chips
• Create abstractions that allow hardware structures, configurations, experiments, and results to be represented consistently across tools.
• Automate high-value engineering workflows and improve their reproducibility, observability, testability, and ease of use.
• Partner with architects, RTL designers, verification engineers, compiler engineers, and systems software engineers to gather requirements and then implement solutions.
• Use methodology and tooling to identify design risks early, accelerate iteration, and improve confidence in performance and implementation tradeoffs.
• Contribute across multiple aspects of software and hardware development as the first-party silicon program and its development methodology evolve.

Skills

C++

Python

Rust

Systems programming

Tools

EDA tooling

Simulation frameworks

Compilers

Verification systems

Job description

About the Team

OpenAI’s Hardware organization develops AI-native silicon and system-level solutions for the unique demands of advanced AI workloads. Building on efforts like Jalapeño, the team is developing future generations of AI-native silicon and tightly integrated systems to power the next generation of frontier models. By co-designing chips, systems, tools, and methodologies, the team helps deliver faster, more efficient, and production-ready hardware for OpenAI’s supercomputing platform.

About the Role

We’re looking for a software engineer to help build the design methodology, software abstractions, and infrastructure that enable a small silicon team to develop complex chips rapidly and with high confidence. You will turn evolving architecture and design needs into reusable tools and workflows that improve iteration speed, quality, and then apply those tools to help construct world-class silicon.

You’ll work closely across architecture, design, verification, performance modeling, and systems software. This role is well suited for an engineer who enjoys building high quality software and is motivated by the challenge of improving velocity and quality of the silicon development process.

In this role, you will:

• Develop and scale design methodologies for rapid first-party chip development and apply them to construct complex custom chips
• Create abstractions that allow hardware structures, configurations, experiments, and results to be represented consistently across tools.
• Automate high-value engineering workflows and improve their reproducibility, observability, testability, and ease of use.
• Partner with architects, RTL designers, verification engineers, compiler engineers, and systems software engineers to gather requirements and then implement solutions.
• Use methodology and tooling to identify design risks early, accelerate iteration, and improve confidence in performance and implementation tradeoffs.
• Contribute across multiple aspects of software and hardware development as the first-party silicon program and its development methodology evolve.

You might thrive in this role if:

• You have strong software engineering skills in C++, Python, Rust, or similar systems-oriented languages.
• You have experience building engineering infrastructure, developer tools, simulation frameworks, EDA/CAD tooling, compilers, or verification systems.
• You understand digital design and computer architecture well enough to translate silicon-development needs into useful software abstractions.
• Have experience integrating RTL and IP components into an SoC.
• You have designed APIs, object models, or data models for complex systems and care about extensibility, correctness, and usability.
• You are comfortable automating multi-stage workflows, building regression systems, and improving reproducibility across teams.
• You can reason across architecture, design, verification, performance modeling, and software boundaries.
• You enjoy partnering closely with domain experts and turning loosely defined engineering needs into durable tools and methodologies.
• You thrive in rapidly evolving environments and can balance immediate program needs with longer-term platform quality.

To comply with U.S. export control laws and regulations, candidates for this role may need to meet certain legal status requirements as provided in those laws and regulations.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity.

We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.

Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

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We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link.

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