Systems Generalist, GPT Infrastructure

OpenAI • San Francisco, CA

1d • $293,000 - $385,000

About The Position

OpenAI is seeking an experienced systems generalist to help build an automated inference optimization platform. This platform will take a workload, target hardware profile, compiler and runtime context, and a trusted verifier to run optimization campaigns that generate, compile, execute, grade, and improve candidate kernels, runtime configurations, and serving-stack changes. The role involves designing both the OpenAI-hosted control plane and the partner-side software that evaluates candidates on real accelerator hardware. The product must ensure reliability of long-running workflows, reproducibility of performance results, and maintain clear trust boundaries around sensitive model and hardware information. This is a cross-stack role requiring strong software engineering fundamentals, systems thinking, and performance intuition, with collaboration across research, inference engineering, infrastructure, security, product, and strategic partners.

Requirements

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience building large-scale distributed systems, infrastructure platforms, or cloud services, or equivalent depth of experience.
• Strong programming skills in one or more of C++, Python, Go, or Rust.
• Experience designing and operating highly available backend systems, APIs, job orchestration systems, or durable workflows for production workloads.
• Strong understanding of distributed systems, Linux, networking, storage, containers, and modern cloud architectures.
• Experience debugging complex systems and using measurement, profiling, and benchmarks to guide engineering decisions.
• Proven ability to lead complex technical initiatives as a senior individual contributor and work effectively across organizational boundaries.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with AI infrastructure, inference-serving systems, or large-scale machine learning systems.
• Experience with compilers, runtimes, kernel optimization, or performance engineering; familiarity with technologies such as LLVM, MLIR, Triton, CUDA, or ROCm is a plus.
• Familiarity with GPUs, accelerators, hardware architecture, ISA concepts, or vendor toolchains.
• Experience with inference-serving frameworks or engines such as vLLM, SGLang, Triton Inference Server, or similar systems.
• Experience building developer platforms, external APIs, remote execution systems, or secure partner-facing infrastructure.
• Experience working with strategic cloud, hardware, or infrastructure partners.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate durable APIs and control-plane services for multi-hour or multi-day optimization campaigns, including scheduling, retries, budgets, checkpoints, artifact lineage, and observability.
• Build secure partner-side runner and grader software that can compile, execute, verify, and benchmark candidate artifacts on third-party accelerator hardware.
• Integrate hardware profiles, ISA and toolchain context, compilers, runtimes, and inference-serving engines into a repeatable optimization workflow.
• Turn research prototypes into reliable product surfaces with clear contracts, debuggable failure modes, reproducible outputs, and excellent developer ergonomics.
• Develop correctness and performance evaluation systems spanning latency, throughput, memory use, utilization, and cost efficiency.
• Build artifact, provenance, and qualification workflows that make optimized kernels, binaries, configurations, and reports safe to review and deploy.
• Collaborate with Research, Inference Engineering, Infrastructure, Security, Product, and Strategic Partnerships to deliver production-ready solutions.
• Drive technical architecture and execution across ambiguous, cross-functional initiatives that connect OpenAI systems with partner environments.

Benefits

• OpenAI is 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.
• Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates.
• We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed