Systems Software Engineer

Location: San Francisco, CA (Hybrid: 4 days onsite/week). Relocation assistance available.

About The Team

We build foundational platform software that enables reliable, secure, and performant products. The team works across system layers and partners closely with adjacent engineering groups to deliver robust capabilities from concept through launch.

About The Role

We’re seeking a Systems Software Engineer to design, implement, and debug core platform components and the pipelines that build and update system images. You’ll work across operating system layers, focusing on performance, security, and deep system debugging to ship production‑grade systems.

In This Role, You Will

• Design, implement, and debug system‑level components and services across kernel and user space.
• Configure and maintain OS platform services (init, services, networking, security policies) and related tooling.
• Build and operate image and update pipelines, ensuring reliability, reproducibility, and rollback safety.
• Instrument and analyze performance using profiling and tracing; optimize CPU, memory, I/O, and power usage.
• Own platform observability and reliability: logging, crash capture, watchdogs, and diagnostics.

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• Collaborate with cross‑functional teams to define interfaces and deliver end‑to‑end features.
• Establish strong engineering practices: code review, CI, reproducible builds, and release management.
• Partner with external suppliers to support builds and deployments.
  
  

You Might Thrive In This Role If You

• Have shipped production systems software on modern operating systems.
• Are proficient in C/C++ and a scripting language, and comfortable with OS internals (concurrency, memory management, filesystems, networking, power management).
• Bring strong systems debugging skills using debuggers, tracers, profilers, and logs across kernel/user‑space boundaries.
• Understand configuration of platform services and interfaces, and can translate requirements into stable, well‑documented APIs.

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• Are fluent in user‑space foundations (service management, IPC, networking, packaging, automation).
• Have experience building platform images and designing update mechanisms for reliability and security.
  
  

Preferred Qualifications

• Exposure to platform security (secure boot, sandboxing, mandatory access controls, attestation).
• Experience with graphics/media, hardware acceleration, or high‑throughput data paths.
• Familiarity with connectivity stacks and network configuration.
• Observability and diagnostics in distributed or resource‑constrained environments.
• Work on open‑source platforms or contributions to systems projects.
  
  

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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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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: $293K - $325K