Software Engineer, Automation & Systems

About the Team

The Frontier Systems team at OpenAI builds, launches, and supports the largest supercomputers in the world that OpenAI uses for its most cutting edge model training.

We take data center designs, turn them into real, working systems and build any software needed for running large-scale frontier model trainings.

Our mission is to bring up, stabilize and keep these hyperscale supercomputers reliable and efficient during the training of the frontier models.

About the Role

You will design and build automation systems that manage the lifecycle of compute, storage, and network infrastructure across globally distributed data centers.

You’ll write scalable software to orchestrate large fleets of servers and networking devices, eliminate manual workflows, and maintain a known-good state across infrastructure. Your work will begin in controlled lab environments and scale to production deployments managing millions of devices.

We’re looking for software engineers who are excited about systems work - people who want to understand every component, automate it, and make large-scale systems feel simple.

In this role, you will

• Automate everything - from provisioning, configuration, repair, and upgrades to decommissioning

• Design scalable infrastructure and orchestration systems to operate data centers reliably at global scale

• Build configuration management systems and improve observability tooling for fleet operations

• Drive network automation and configuration - including routing, device management, and diagnostics

• Contribute to in-house tools for Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) and IP Address Management (IPAM) Improve workflows for lifecycle management, repair tracking, and remote operations

• Prototype new systems in lab environments and bring them to production

You might thrive in this role if you

• Have strong software engineering experience in Python (or another systems-oriented language)

• Have built or operated infrastructure automation systems for HPC, large-scale compute, or distributed clusters

• Understand Linux systems deeply - across performance tuning, debugging, and kernel-level behavior

• Have experience automating network configuration, routing, and observability

• Are familiar with configuration management frameworks like Chef, Puppet, Ansible, or similar

• Are passionate about eliminating manual toil, building self-healing systems, and operating at scale

Bonus skills (not required)

• Experience building or integrating DCIM/IPAM systems

• Familiarity with databases for tracking infrastructure state and telemetry

• Experience with CI/CD systems and automated deployments

• Understanding of physical data center operations - power, cooling, cabling, rack layouts

• Comfort directing remote hands teams for racking, diagnostics, or repair execution

• Exposure to GPU clusters or AI/ML infrastructure environments

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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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.