System Software Engineer, BMC and Manageability

The scaling team collaborates to design AI supercomputing systems, pushing the boundaries of hardware and infrastructure innovation.

We're seeking a System Software Engineer to join our scaling team. In this role, you'll design, develop, and implement low-level manageability software, including BMC software, system health monitoring, and hardware diagnostics for manufacturing and testing. You'll work with open technologies like OpenBMC and Redfish, integrating with third-party hardware and customized software solutions.
This role involves close collaboration with hardware, software, and systems engineers to ensure our supercomputers deliver top-tier performance, reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS). You'll also review and guide third-party vendors to meet stringent technical and quality standards.

• Design, develop, and maintain firmware/software for supercomputer hardware manageability, focusing on BMC, Redfish, secure boot, firmware updates, and BIOS/UEFI.

• Collaborate with hardware teams and external vendors to define and develop diagnostics and qualification software for advanced compute hardware.

• Lead and define software manageability requirements with vendors, review deliverables, and manage third-party software integration.

• Monitor vendor firmware development, ensuring adherence to technical standards, timelines, and quality metrics.

• Integrate BMC monitoring software into fleet-wide management systems.

• Enhance OpenBMC firmware for system monitoring, power/cooling management, machine health, and diagnostics.

• Implement and optimize bootloaders, device drivers, debuggers, and low-level system software.

• Debug, test, and validate firmware/software for reliability in complex, high-power environments.

• Design and execute system-level power, thermal management, and fan control strategies.

• Drive firmware architecture innovations to meet performance, security, and power efficiency goals.

• Collaborate cross-functionally with hardware, system architecture, power, and cooling teams.

• Support mass production readiness through scalable software/firmware solutions.

• Troubleshoot hardware-firmware interface issues during development and testing.

• Experience with OpenBMC in managing accelerators or SoCs.

• Proficiency in C, C++, and Rust for embedded systems.

• Strong knowledge of hardware interfaces: I2C, SPI, PCIe, Ethernet, USB.

• Hardware/software co-design experience in large-scale compute systems.

• Proven track record defining and managing vendor relationships and deliverables.

• Understanding of system monitoring in HPC environments and fleet management software.

• Embedded systems expertise, including bootloaders, drivers, and hardware-software interfacing.

• Familiarity with security best practices: RoTs, DICE, device provisioning, signing, attestation.

• Experience with version control, continuous integration, and build systems.

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.

Compensation Range: $360K - $530K