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Software Engineer, Kernel Performance & AI Tooling

OpenAI· Scaling
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Hybrid (San Francisco)$266k - $445k + equityFull-timePosted 6mo ago

About the role

Role focused on kernel development, performance engineering, and hardware-software co-design with emphasis on AI-assisted workflows and tooling. Intersects kernel optimization, developer tooling, observability, and research infrastructure to improve production kernels and future hardware-software systems.

Responsibilities

  • Build developer tooling and workflows that make kernel development and performance optimization faster, more scalable, and easier to debug, integrate, and deploy.
  • Develop observability, diagnostics, and validation infrastructure that makes AI-assisted optimization systems more interpretable, reliable, and effective.
  • Optimize production kernels end to end by formulating optimization problems, running search loops, analyzing bottlenecks, debugging generated implementations, and landing improvements into production.
  • Design abstractions, interfaces, and automation systems that accelerate kernel optimization, correctness validation, and hardware-software co-design.
  • Improve AI-assisted optimization systems for specialized tasks through better datasets, evaluations, benchmarking, and research infrastructure.
  • Partner across research and engineering teams to turn new ideas into practical systems spanning production needs and long-term infrastructure strategy.

Qualifications

  • Strong systems or tooling engineering experience, with a background in low-level software, performance optimization, or infrastructure.
  • Experience with developer tooling, debugging infrastructure, profiling, observability, or workflow design for technical users.
  • Depth in kernel development, accelerator architecture, compiler systems, or related performance-critical domains.
  • Familiarity with AI-assisted systems, agentic workflows, post-training, or reinforcement learning for engineering or research applications.
  • Strong experimental judgment, comfort with ambiguity, and the ability to move fluidly between research exploration and production execution.
  • Interest in compilers, DSLs, program synthesis, or AI for systems.

Skills

Required:Systems or tooling engineeringDeveloper tooling and debugging infrastructureKernel development / accelerator architecture / compiler systems
Nice to have:AI-assisted systems / agentic workflows / post-training / RL for engineering

Benefits

  • 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
  • Mental health and wellness support
  • Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage
  • Annual learning and development stipend
  • 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
Last updated Aug 13, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About OpenAI

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