Systems Software Engineer, Management Plane

OpenAI; United States; Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Relocation assistance

Hybrid work model

Job summary

OpenAI is seeking a System Software Engineer for its First-Party Hardware team in San Francisco. You will design, build, validate, and own low-level system software for AI hardware manageability, covering BMC, BIOS/UEFI, and telemetry interfaces while collaborating across lab automation and manufacturing readiness.

The role emphasizes hands-on work, high ownership, and driving partner integrations through proof of implementation, builds, tests, and validation artifacts.

Qualifications

• Experience designing and maintaining low-level system software for hardware manageability.
• Strong debugging across hardware and software boundaries.
• Familiarity with lab automation and validation workflows.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain low-level firmware and system software for first-party AI hardware manageability, including BMC software, Redfish services, gNMI telemetry, firmware update and recovery flows, BIOS/UEFI interactions, platform drivers, and hardware diagnostics.

Skills

Low-level firmware

System software

Hardware diagnostics

Automation infra

Tools

BMC

Redfish

gNMI

BIOS/UEFI

Linux

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 seeking a System Software Engineer to join our First-Party Hardware team. In this role, you will design, build, integrate, and validate low-level system software for the manageability and health of OpenAI's first-party AI hardware systems. You will work across BMC, Linux, firmware interfaces, automation infra, boot and recovery, hardware diagnostics, telemetry, host and platform drivers, network software interfaces, and manufacturing and fleet readiness. A major part of this role is owning the acceptance path for partner-delivered system software: defining requirements, reviewing code and artifacts, reproducing builds, building tests, pushing fixes, and producing the evidence needed for launch decisions. This role is hands-on and high-ownership. You will write and review low-level software, debug issues across hardware and software boundaries, build infra and automation to test and manage devices in lab, guide partner deliverables, build validation evidence, and help carry platforms from bring-up through production deployment.

Location: San Francisco, CA (Hybrid: 3 days/week onsite) Relocation assistance available.

Job Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain low-level firmware and system software for first-party AI hardware manageability, including BMC software, Redfish services, gNMI telemetry, firmware update and recovery flows, BIOS/UEFI interactions, platform drivers, and hardware diagnostics.
• Own integration and acceptance of partner and ve