System Software Engineer, Manageability Architecture

About the Team The Scaling team is responsible for the architectural and engineering backbone of OpenAI’s infrastructure. We design and deliver advanced systems that support the deployment and operation of cutting-edge AI models. Our work spans system software, platform architecture, fleet-level monitoring, and performance optimization.

About the Role We're seeking a System Software Engineer to lead the development of next-generation system manageability. In this role, you will design system management interfaces and APIs aligned with industry standards, and collaborate closely with teams focused on orchestration and monitoring.

You will act as a key technical liaison between internal teams and external partners, ensuring high standards for security, scalability, and observability. You’ll lead development and integration of core components, guide third-party contributions, and ensure systems are production-ready at scale.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement software components supporting system manageability (e.g., boot processes, telemetry, update flows).

• Lead architectural efforts for system-level power, thermal, and health monitoring.

• Extend management firmware to integrate with internal tooling and workflows.

• Integrate monitoring-related software from external sources.

• Define diagnostics and contribute to system bring-up and factory validation tooling.

• Review external software for compliance, security, and performance.

• Specify interfaces between system software and hardware management abstractions.

• Collaborate across hardware, software, and platform engineering to deliver cohesive functionality.

• Participate in hands-on debugging and validation during system bring-up and deployment.

• Contribute to improvements in system reliability, availability, and serviceability.

Qualifications Required:

• Experience designing and implementing large-scale system management interfaces and automation.

• Strong skills in C/C++, Python, and shell scripting; Rust is a plus.

• Familiarity with hardware health and monitoring concepts.

• Experience with provisioning and bootstrapping of systems.

• Proven track record of developing scalable system monitoring tools.

• Ability to define software requirements for vendors and assess their work.

• Understanding of system security primitives (e.g., secure boot, attestation, root-of-trust).

• Ability to collaborate across multidisciplinary teams.

Nice to have

• Background in high-performance or datacenter-scale computing environments.

• Familiarity with telemetry ingestion and observability systems.

• Experience working with diverse firmware ecosystems across multiple platforms.

• Exposure to open management software projects.

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.

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

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