System Software Engineer - AI Hardware & Firmware Lead

OpenAI; California (MO); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Relocation assistance

Job summary

OpenAI in San Francisco, CA is seeking a System Software Engineer for its First-Party Hardware team. You will design, build, and validate low-level system software for AI hardware manageability, working across BMC, Linux, firmware interfaces, and automation infra to keep platforms reliable and production-ready.

This hands-on role requires 7+ years of experience in low-level software, strong C/C++/Rust skills, and the ability to collaborate across hardware, firmware, and manufacturing partners.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of hands-on experience in low-level system software or embedded firmware.
• Proficient in C/C++ and Rust for reliable, production-grade software.
• Experience with Linux-based hardware platforms and OpenBMC/Redfish ecosystems.
• Ability to collaborate across hardware, firmware, security, and operations.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain low-level firmware and system software for AI hardware manageability.
• Own integration and acceptance of partner/vendor software releases with requirements, code review, reproducible builds, and launch-ready evidence.
• Build and maintain automation/CI infra for testing/managing systems in the lab.
• Define and debug hardware management protocols across accelerators, host systems, and firmware (I2C, SMBus, PMBus, PCIe, Ethernet, GPIO, UART, JTAG).
• Develop validation/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: images, versions, logs, limits, mapping, provisioning hooks, export traces.

Skills

Low-level system software

Embedded software

Firmware

BMC software

Device drivers

Hardware diagnostics

C

C++

Rust

Tools

Linux

OpenBMC

Redfish

BMCWeb

IPMI

BIOS/UEFI

Bootloaders

Firmware update systems

Kernel drivers

RTOS

Job description

OpenAI in San Francisco, CA is seeking a System Software Engineer for its First-Party Hardware team. You will design, build, and validate low-level system software for AI hardware manageability, working across BMC, Linux, firmware interfaces, and automation infra to keep platforms reliable and production-ready.

This hands-on role requires 7+ years of experience in low-level software, strong C/C++/Rust skills, and the ability to collaborate across hardware, firmware, and manufacturing partners.