System Software Engineer, First-Party Hardware

OpenAI

. 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.

Posted 5/8/2026full-timeSan Francisco • California • 🇺🇸 United StatesSeniorLead💰 $266,000 - $445,000 per yearWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

LinuxRTOSRust

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

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 vendor software releases, including requirements, code and artifact review, reproducible builds, CI, regression monitoring, version tracking, acceptance criteria, and launch-readiness evidence.
Build and maintain automation and CI infra for testing and managing systems in our lab
Define and debug hardware management protocols across accelerators, host systems, management controllers, firmware, and platform services, including interfaces such as I2C, SMBus, PMBus, PCIe, Ethernet, GPIO, UART, and JTAG.
Build system health monitoring, telemetry, remote diagnostics, and recovery paths that make hardware failures diagnosable in the lab, at manufacturing partners, and in production data centers.
Develop validation and test automation for board bring-up, rack bring-up, qualification, manufacturing readiness, deployment readiness, and long-term reliability.
Convert engineering releases into manufacturing-ready software recipes: images, versions, logs, limits, remediation mapping, provisioning hooks, secure artifact handling, and traceable data export.
Debug complex production issues spanning hardware signals, BMC firmware, BIOS/UEFI, kernel drivers, platform services, network topology, PCIe behavior, power, thermals, boot, provisioning, and manufacturing test.
Partner with hardware, firmware, security, networking, infrastructure, manufacturing, operations, and external engineering teams to define software contracts, unblock bring-up, and drive issues to closure.
Produce durable architecture notes, runbooks, validation records, and decision documents that help OpenAI and partner teams reproduce, operate, and improve the platform.

Requirements

What you’ll need

7+ years of hands-on experience, or exceptional accomplishments demonstrating equivalent expertise, in low-level system software, embedded software, firmware, BMC software, platform software, device drivers, or hardware diagnostics.
Strong programming skills in C, C++, Rust or similar systems languages, with experience building reliable software for real hardware.
Experience with Linux-based hardware platforms, embedded Linux, OpenBMC, Redfish, BMCWeb, IPMI boundaries, BIOS/UEFI, bootloaders, firmware update systems, kernel drivers, RTOS, or fleet management software.
Strong knowledge of hardware/software interfaces such as I2C, SMBus, PMBus, SPI, PCIe, Ethernet, USB, UART, GPIO, JTAG, power controllers, board-level debug tools, or protocol analyzers.
Demonstrated ability to debug live hardware using logs, packet captures, firmware traces, bus captures, lab hosts, BMC journals, Linux tooling, and carefully controlled experiments.
Experience with hardware bring-up, manufacturing or qualification testing, system diagnostics, release validation, or deployment of high-performance compute, accelerator, server, networking, storage, or embedded platforms.
Ability to reason across software, firmware, hardware, manufacturing, and operations boundaries, and to turn ambiguous problems into clear requirements, designs, tests, and decisions.
Proven track record working with external vendors, manufacturing partners, or partner engineering teams to define deliverables, review technical work, and drive issues to closure.
Familiarity with platform security topics such as secure boot, firmware signing, device provisioning, attestation, certificate handling, trusted update flows, or access-control design is a plus.

Benefits

Comp & perks

Medical, dental, and vision insurance for you and your family, with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts
Pre-tax accounts for Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and commuter expenses (parking and transit)
401(k) retirement plan with employer match
Paid parental leave (up to 24 weeks for birth parents and 20 weeks for non-birthing parents), plus paid medical and caregiver leave (up to 8 weeks)
Paid time off: flexible PTO for exempt employees and up to 15 days annually for non-exempt employees
13+ paid company holidays, and multiple paid coordinated company office closures throughout the year for focus and recharge, plus paid sick or safe time (1 hour per 30 hours worked, or more, as required by applicable state or local law)
Mental health and wellness support
Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage
Annual learning and development stipend to fuel your professional growth
Daily meals in our offices, and meal delivery credits as eligible
Relocation support for eligible employees
Additional taxable fringe benefits, such as charitable donation matching and wellness stipends, may also be provided.

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

low-level system softwareembedded softwarefirmwareBMC softwaredevice driversCC++RustLinux-based hardware platformshardware diagnostics

Soft Skills

debuggingproblem-solvingcollaborationcommunicationrequirements definitiondecision makingproject managementanalytical thinkingattention to detailadaptability