System Engineering Program Manager

About the Team

We deliver reliable, high‑quality hardware systems at scale. The team partners closely with industrial design, electrical and mechanical engineering, firmware/software, reliability/test, operations, and manufacturing to turn concepts into shipped products.

About the Role

As a System Engineering Program Manager (EPM), you will orchestrate complex hardware systems programs from early architecture through validation, pilot, ramp, and sustain. You’ll align stakeholders on scope and success metrics, build transparent plans, surface and resolve risks, and keep teams moving fast while maintaining quality and compliance. This role is highly cross‑functional and requires technical depth, crisp communication, and strong judgment.

This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We use a hybrid work model with an expectation of being onsite four days per week, and offer relocation assistance to new employees.

In this role, you will:

• Coordinate early engagements on product architecture, feature definition, and program execution.

• Support system definition and drive closure of architecture and technical opens in the early stages of a project; establish and maintain a clear feature baseline.

• Identify and highlight technical risk areas and mitigation strategies in partnership with multi‑functional engineering teams.

• Grasp complex technical topics and abstract key issues/risks into actionable communication for leadership.

• Maintain a full‑system view as the point of convergence across sub‑systems (EE/ME/FW/SW, ID/PD, test, operations).

• Create and maintain comprehensive schedules including baselines, cross‑functional dependencies, and critical paths.

• Lead development budgets and related activities (purchase orders, change requests, invoicing) with rigorous tracking.

• Drive key decisions under ambiguity, balancing risk, priority, and schedule.

• Establish working cross‑functional program plans; identify and manage dependencies and support resolving issues between teams.

• Communicate development and feasibility needs, set milestones for checkpoints and status updates, and drive alignment across the organization and with external partners.

• Lead cross‑functional teams through program milestones and engineering validation activities (e.g., EVT/DVT/PVT).

• Create comprehensive build plans and drive engineering builds with vendors and contract manufacturing (CM/ODM) partners.

• Deliver regular executive updates/presentations and drive decision alignment.

• Identify and drive process efficiencies for new product introduction (NPI) with multi‑functional teams.

• Travel as needed to support engineering builds and on‑site manufacturing activities.

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Have 5+ years of project/program management experience in consumer electronics or hardware product development.

• Bring a strong background across hardware and software technologies and understand system‑level tradeoffs.

• Have 5–7 years of product development experience from early concept through production, with exposure to hardware, software, test, and infrastructure across both development and manufacturing.

• Are self‑motivated and proactive, with demonstrated creative and critical thinking; comfortable flexing process to fit the problem.

• Excel at identifying critical technical questions and organizing teams to efficiently answer them.

• Understand how system‑level decisions impact user experience and can communicate those impacts clearly.

• Can lead multiple programs with rapid development cycles and shifting priorities.

• Have a history of leading strategic partner relationships and multi‑functional collaboration.

Nice to have

• Experience in consumer audio, wearables, or other high‑volume hardware categories.

• Familiarity with reliability, verification/validation, and factory readiness best practices.

• Experience with tooling to track build readiness, risks, and quality metrics.

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.

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with applicable law, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act. 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.

To notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant, please submit a report through this form. No response will be provided to inquiries unrelated to job posting compliance.

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

OpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy

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.