engineering
Posted May 22Capacity Systems Software Engineer
at openai
San Francisco, United StatesHybrid
Responsibilities
- - Develop backend services, APIs, workflows, and data platforms that support capacity forecasting, allocation, deployment readiness, and operational planning.
- - Build applications that connect infrastructure delivery, fleet health, capacity utilization, product demand, and financial planning into a shared operational view.
- - Build planning and scenario-modeling systems that help leaders understand tradeoffs across capacity, utilization, cost, reliability, launch timing, and business impact.
- - Create workflow automation and decision-support tooling that improves planning accuracy and reduces operational overhead.
- - Drive architecture decisions across planning platforms, operational tooling, and internal infrastructure systems.
- - Build extensible software foundations that scale alongside OpenAI's rapidly growing infrastructure footprint.
Requirements
- About the Team OpenAI's Industrial Compute organization is responsible for planning, delivering, operating, and optimizing the compute infrastructure that powers frontier AI.
- You will partner closely with Capacity Planning, Fleet Operations, Infrastructure Engineering, Product, Finance, Supply Chain, and Strategic Sourcing teams to replace spreadsheet-driven workflows with scalable software systems that enable visibility, automation, and decision support across OpenAI's global compute footprint.
- This role is based in San Francisco and follows OpenAI's hybrid work model of 3 days per week in the office.
- Capacity decisions increasingly require understanding complex tradeoffs across infrastructure delivery, fleet health, model deployment, latency, utilization, cost, revenue impact, and operational risk.
- experience in software engineering, platform engineering, infrastructure engineering, or related technical disciplines. - Strong programming
- experience in Python, Go, Java, TypeScript, or similar languages. -
- Experience working with large operational datasets and business-critical workflows. - Ability to operate effectively in highly cross-functional environments and translate ambiguous operational challenges into scalable technical solutions. - Strong ownership mindset and ability to independently drive complex projects. Preferred Skills -
- Experience with SQL, data warehouses, orchestration frameworks, analytics platforms, and distributed data systems. -
- Experience supporting infrastructure, cloud platforms, data centers, hardware deployment programs, or large-scale operational environments. - Familiarity with capacity planning, supply chain systems, financial modeling, or infrastructure operations. -
- Experience replacing spreadsheet-driven workflows with scalable software platforms. -
- Experience building systems that support scenario planning, forecasting, optimization, or resource allocation. - Familiarity with AI infrastructure, hyperscale compute environments, or large-scale distributed systems.
- About OpenAI OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence
Experience
- Qualifications - 5+ years of
Additional details
- As OpenAI scales toward becoming an intelligence utility, Industrial Compute coordinates a complex lifecycle spanning infrastructure strategy, capacity planning, provider partnerships, fleet operations, product demand, and financial planning.
- The organization manages one of the largest and fastest-growing compute footprints in the world, where decisions around capacity allocation, deployment readiness, utilization, reliability, and product demand directly impact product availability, customer experience, and business performance.
- The Capacity Systems team builds the software platforms, data systems, and automation frameworks that connect these functions into a shared operating model.
- We transform fragmented planning workflows into scalable systems that enable teams to understand what compute was contracted, delivered, healthy, allocated, and ultimately converted into business and research outcomes.
- About the Role We are seeking a Capacity Systems Software Engineer to build the platforms and services that power Industrial Compute planning, forecasting, optimization, and operational decision-making.
- In this role, you will design and develop software systems that connect infrastructure delivery, fleet health, capacity allocation, demand forecasting, deployment readiness, financial planning, and product consumption into a unified system of record.
- Your work will help OpenAI make better decisions about where compute should be deployed, how capacity should be allocated, and how infrastructure investments translate into business value.
- This role is ideal for engineers who enjoy building internal platforms, operational systems, workflow automation, and data-intensive applications that sit at the intersection of software, infrastructure, and business operations.
- Why This Role Matters Demand for compute is growing faster than traditional planning systems can support.
- The systems built by this team help transform compute from a collection of disconnected operational signals into a measurable, optimizable business capability.