Software Security Architect, Operating Systems | Consumer Devices

OpenAI; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 268,000 - 342,000; Full time

Job summary

OpenAI is seeking a Software Security Architect to define the security architecture for our next‑generation operating system. You will work with hardware security architects and partner with OS, silicon, firmware, privacy, and product teams to protect users, their devices, and data, while aligning with OpenAI’s safety principles.

This senior, hands‑on role bridges OS internals and hardware‑backed security with real‑world product constraints.

Qualifications

• Deep experience designing or securing operating systems, kernels, embedded platforms, hypervisors, or other privileged systems software.
• Complex understanding of operating system internals, including memory protection, process isolation, executable loading, device drivers, and privilege boundaries.
• Experience building security architectures that span hardware, firmware, operating systems, applications, 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 operating system.
• 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 emerging threats into practical, enforceable requirements.
• Prototype solutions, review security‑critical systems code, and guide engineering teams through complex technical and product tradeoffs.

Skills

OS security architecture

C/C++/Rust

Threat modeling

Tools

Secure boot

Code signing

Attestation

Trusted execution

Job description

About The Team

OpenAI Consumer Devices is building the next generation of products that bring powerful AI into people’s everyday lives. Guided by OpenAI’s mission to ensure AGI benefits all of humanity, our team combines world-class researchers, engineers, designers, and operators who care deeply about creating useful, intuitive, and responsible technology. You’ll have the opportunity to work alongside exceptional people on ambitious, zero-to-one challenges at the intersection of hardware, software, and AI. This is a chance to help define an entirely new category of products—and shape how people experience AI in the future.

Operating Systems team

The Operating Systems team is critical in this mission, turning sophisticated hardware and AI capabilities into a reliable, trusted platform. Security is central to that work: we define trust boundaries, integrate hardware-backed protections, isolate sensitive context, and establish the guardrails that let AI applications and agents act safely, privately, and under user control.

About The Role

We’re looking for a Software Security Architect to define the security architecture for OpenAI’s next-generation operating system. You’ll work alongside hardware security architects and partner with operating system, silicon, firmware, privacy, and product teams to protect users, their devices, and their data.

This is a senior, hands‑on role for someone who can connect operating system internals, hardware‑backed security, and real‑world product constraints. Your work will shape the platform’s trust model, protect sensitive information, and set the technical foundations for AI that is safe, private, and under user control.

In This Role, You Will

• 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 operating system.
• 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 emerging threats into practical, enforceable requirements.
• Prototype solutions, review security‑critical systems code, and guide engineering teams through complex technical and product tradeoffs.

Minimum Qualifications

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

You Might Thrive In This Role If You

• Bring practical expertise in secure boot, code signing, device identity, attestation, trusted execution, and hardware-backed key protection.
• Can write or review systems code in C, C++, Rust, or comparable languages, with a strong grasp of secure development and exploit mitigation.
• Build rigorous threat models, influence cross‑functional engineering teams, and communicate security tradeoffs clearly.
• Care deeply about user privacy, personal agency, and building systems that earn trust through their design.

Helpful Experience

• Shipping security technologies for consumer operating systems, mobile platforms, or connected devices.
• Kernel hardening, memory‑safety mitigations, virtualization‑based security, or secure enclave integration.
• Security architecture for AI agents, sensitive‑context isolation, permissioned tool use, or prompt‑injection resistance.
• Device provisioning, manufacturing security, secure recovery, or lifecycle security for hardware products.

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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At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.

Compensation Range: $268K - $342K