engineering
Posted May 6Software Engineer, Core Network Engineering
at openai
San Francisco, United StatesOn-site
Responsibilities
- YOU WILL: - Design, build, and operate networking systems that support large-scale AI training and inference infrastructure - Improve performance, reliability, and scalability across host networking, datacenter fabrics, and WAN systems - Develop automation for provisioning, configuration management, validation, upgrades, and lifecycle management of networking infrastructure - Build tooling and observability systems for network health, performance analysis, debugging, and automated remediation - Optimize
Requirements
- ABOUT THE TEAM The Core Network Engineering team owns the end-to-end networking stack that connects OpenAI’s compute infrastructure — spanning global WAN/edge connectivity, data-center networking, and high-performance host/xPU networking used for large-scale training and inference workloads.
- They design and operate the systems that provide predictable, high-throughput, low-latency connectivity across some of the world’s most advanced AI infrastructure.
- ABOUT THE ROLE We’re looking for engineers to help build and operate the networking foundation behind OpenAI’s frontier AI systems.
- Depending on your background and area of focus, you may work across host networking, datacenter fabrics, or global WAN infrastructure.
- experience with Linux networking, kernel systems, NICs, RDMA, or performance-sensitive infrastructure software - Have worked with high-performance networking technologies such as InfiniBand, RoCE, DPDK, or large-scale Ethernet fabrics - Have
- experience with datacenter networking, WAN systems, or host networking stacks - Enjoy debugging complex systems and performance bottlenecks across multiple layers of the stack - Are comfortable writing production software in languages such as C++, Python, or Go - Have strong systems fundamentals across networking, operating systems, distributed systems, or infrastructure engineering - Are motivated by building infrastructure that directly accelerates frontier AI research and deployment About OpenAI OpenAI
Additional details
- This team is responsible for ensuring networking is never the bottleneck to model training efficiency, cluster reliability, or fleet expansion.
- The problems span low-level systems software, distributed infrastructure, protocol readiness, observability, performance engineering, automation, and large-scale network operations.
- You’ll work on systems where microseconds of latency, tail performance, and network reliability directly impact model training efficiency and production serving performance.
- This role is ideal for engineers who enjoy operating close to the hardware/software boundary and solving performance-critical infrastructure problems at massive scale. IN THIS ROLE,
- experience building or operating large-scale networking or distributed systems infrastructure - Are comfortable working close to the hardware/software boundary - Have