System Software Engineer - job 1 of 2

OpenAI is looking for a System Software Engineer to design, implement, and debug the foundational software that enables our products. You’ll work across the OS stack—kernel, drivers, and userspace daemons—and own pipelines for building and updating device images. Your work will span performance tuning, security hardening, and deep system debugging.

We’re looking for engineers who thrive in complex, cross-disciplinary environments, can take ownership from concept to release, and are passionate about shipping robust, production-grade systems.

In this role, you will:

• Design, implement, and debug kernel modules, device drivers, and userspace daemons

• Configure and maintain the OS: kernel, initramfs, init services, udev rules, networking, and security hardening

• Build and operate image/OTA pipelines (Yocto/Buildroot, package management, A/B updates, dm-verity)

• Instrument and analyze performance with perf, eBPF, ftrace; optimize CPU, memory, I/O, and power usage

• Own system observability and reliability: logging, crash capture, watchdogs, and field diagnostics

• Collaborate with hardware, camera/vision, and application teams to define interfaces and deliver features

• Establish strong engineering practices: code review, CI, reproducible builds, and release management

• Work with vendors and support system builds in the factory

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Have deep experience shipping Linux-based products on hardware devices (arm64 or x86)

• Are proficient in C/C++ and comfortable with embedded Linux internals (drivers, IRQs, power management, filesystems, networking)

• Have strong systems debugging skills with gdb, strace, perf/eBPF, jtag, and kernel logs

• Understand kernel device tree overlays, I2S, I2C, SPI, CSI/DSI

• Are fluent in userspace foundations: systemd, D-Bus, sockets/IPC, udev, networking tools, shell/Python

• Have experience building OS images and packages (Yocto/Buildroot, Debian/RPM, Docker) and OTA updates

• Bonus points for:

  • Upstream contributions to Linux or major subsystems

  • Experience with secure boot, platform security, SELinux/AppArmor, TrustZone/OP-TEE

  • Graphics/ISP or accelerator driver exposure (GPU, V4L2, media/codec, DMA, shared memory)

  • Wireless connectivity stack experience (Wi-Fi/BLE, NetworkManager, wpa_supplicant)

  • Production observability at the edge (symbolized crash reports, metrics, remote diagnostics)

  • Experience in robotics, mobile, or other resource-constrained devices

  • Familiarity with on-device ML accelerators, audio pipelines (ALSA, DSP, WebRTC, gstreamer)

  • Knowledge of protobuf and other serialization formats

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.

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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.