OpenAI · 10 hours ago
Networking Operating System Firmware Engineer
San Francisco, CA
Full-time
Hybrid
Senior Level
$310K/yr - $460K/yrOpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. They are seeking a Networking Operating System Firmware Engineer to help bootstrap and scale the switching layer of their AI supercomputers, focusing on building and maintaining custom SONiC NOS images and optimizing switch platforms for performance and reliability.
Agentic AIArtificial Intelligence (AI)Foundational AIGenerative AIMachine LearningNatural Language ProcessingSaaS
Responsibilities
Design, develop, and maintain custom SONiC NOS images for large-scale bleeding-edge AI fabrics
Integrate and configure Linux kernel components, device drivers, switch ASIC SDKs, and SAI layers
Bring up new switch platforms (thermal/fan control, power monitoring, transceiver management, watchdogs, OSFP CMIS, LEDs, CPLDs, etc.)
Extend and customize SONiC services for routing, telemetry, control-plane state, and distributed automation
Work with hardware teams to validate ASIC configurations, link bring-up, SerDes tuning, buffer profiles, and performance baselines
Evaluate switch silicon SDK releases, track vendor deliverables, and define platform requirements with vendors and ASIC partners
Debug complex issues spanning kernel, platform drivers, SONiC dockers, routing agents, orchestration services, hardware signals, and network topology
Integrate switches into fleet-wide monitoring, remote diagnostics, telemetry pipelines, and automated lifecycle workflows
Develop robust CI/build pipelines for reproducible NOS builds and controlled rollout across the fleet
Support factory bring-up and qualification all the way through mass deployment
Collaborate, architect, implement, and deploy novel networking protocols and technologies to achieve maximum performance and reliability at AI factory scale
Qualification
Required
Proven experience working with SONiC or comparable NOS stacks (FBOSS, Cumulus Linux, Arista EOS, Junos PFE-level integration, etc.)
Experience with updating OpenConfig gNMI interfaces and YANG data models
Strong background in Linux kernel, network device drivers, and low-level OS internals
Experience integrating Broadcom / Marvell / NVIDIA / Intel ASIC SDKs and SAI implementations
Proficiency in C, C++ and Python; familiarity with Rust/Go is a plus
Deep understanding of L2/L3 forwarding, ECMP, RoCE, BGP, QoS, PFC, buffer tuning, and telemetry
Hands-on experience with hardware platform bring-up and board-level debugging
Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines, distributed config/state management, and large-scale automation
Strong cross-functional problem solving in high-performance, distributed environments
Ability to lead teams to deliver a project end to end
Benefits
Relocation assistance
Company
OpenAI
OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company that develops advanced AI models, including ChatGPT. It is a sub-organization of OpenAI Foundation.
Founded in 2015
201-500 employees
H1B Sponsorship
OpenAI has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (1)
2024 (1)
2023 (1)
2022 (18)
2021 (10)
2020 (6)
Funding
Current Stage
Growth StageTotal Funding
$79BKey Investors
The Walt Disney CompanySoftBankThrive Capital
2025-12-11Corporate Round· $1B
2025-10-02Secondary Market· $6.6B
2025-03-31Series Unknown· $40B
Leadership Team
Sam Altman
CEO & Co-Founder
Greg Brockman
President, Chairman, & Co-Founder
Recent News
2026-01-11
thefly.com
2026-01-11
2026-01-11
Company data provided by crunchbase