Field Engineer

OpenAI•San Francisco, CA

1d•Onsite

About The Position

OpenAI Robotics depends on high-quality real-world robot data from a large, live operational environment. That environment has many deployed workcells, changing configurations, and little tolerance for downtime. We are seeking a Field Engineer to help keep that environment running well. You will own the day-to-day technical health of robotic workcells used in ongoing data acquisition operations, diagnose and resolve failures across hardware and software, and build the practical tools, documentation, and support workflows that make operators and technicians more effective. The work is close to the floor, close to the failure modes, and close to the research impact. This role sits at the intersection of software, robotics hardware, and live operations. The best people in it are practical, technically sharp, calm under pressure, and motivated by making real systems work reliably at scale. This role will be based in San Francisco, CA 5 days per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.

Requirements

Have 5+ years of experience supporting electromechanical, robotic, automation, or human-in-the-loop systems in production, R&D, lab, field, or operational environments.
Can independently troubleshoot messy real-world failures under time pressure, where symptoms and root causes are often different.
Are comfortable working across mechanical, electrical, controls, and software boundaries, including logs, configurations, and basic software debugging.
Have strong organizational habits around tickets, documentation, shift-to-shift communication, and follow-through.
Communicate clearly with operators, technicians, shift managers, and engineers, especially when uptime and clarity matter.
Love getting hands-on with physical systems and running complex issues to ground without adding unnecessary complexity.
Hold a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechatronics, Robotics, Computer Engineering, or a related field.

Nice To Haves

Familiarity with robot middleware, motion-control stacks, Linux-based systems, service debugging, or real-time debugging tools.
Experience with fleet operations, internal tools, observability, support platforms, workflow automation, or incident response.
Experience troubleshooting complicated electrical assemblies, wire harnesses, instrumentation, or hardware-software integration issues.
Ability to use CAD for small components, fixtures, brackets, or light modifications to existing assemblies.
Experience improving operational throughput and maintainability, not just fixing isolated failures.

Responsibilities

Serve as an engineering owner for keeping a fleet of robotic workcells online in daily operation.
Diagnose, fix, mitigate, or escalate issues spanning mechanics, electronics, controls, software interfaces, logs, and configuration.
Partner closely with technicians, operators, and engineering teams to improve scalable fleet support processes.
Build or spec lightweight hardware and software tools that improve monitoring, diagnostics, recovery, and handoffs.
Create documentation, SOPs, and diagnostic playbooks that turn engineering insight into repeatable floor practice.
Bring up and support prototype systems, then help transition them into scalable operations as they mature.
Manage, triage, and respond to inbound tickets while maintaining clear issue history, ownership, and escalation paths.
Write lightweight analysis scripts to identify fleet trends, recurring failures, and opportunities to improve reliability.
Provide concise failure reports and operational feedback that help engineering teams improve system design.