Software Engineer, Silicon Design Methodology

About the Team

OpenAI’s Hardware organization develops AI-native silicon and system-level solutions for the unique demands of advanced AI workloads. Building on efforts like Jalapeño, the team is developing future generations of AI-native silicon and tightly integrated systems to power the next generation of frontier models. By co-designing chips, systems, tools, and methodologies, the team helps deliver faster, more efficient, and production-ready hardware for OpenAI’s supercomputing platform.

About the Role

We’re looking for a software engineer to help build the design methodology, software abstractions, and infrastructure that enable a small silicon team to develop complex chips rapidly and with high confidence. You will turn evolving architecture and design needs into reusable tools and workflows that improve iteration speed, quality, and then apply those tools to help construct world-class silicon.

You’ll work closely across architecture, design, verification, performance modeling, and systems software. This role is well suited for an engineer who enjoys building high quality software and is motivated by the challenge of improving velocity and quality of the silicon development process.

In this role, you will

• Develop and scale design methodologies for rapid first-party chip development and apply them to construct complex custom chips

• Create abstractions that allow hardware structures, configurations, experiments, and results to be represented consistently across tools.

• Automate high-value engineering workflows and improve their reproducibility, observability, testability, and ease of use.

• Partner with architects, RTL designers, verification engineers, compiler engineers, and systems software engineers to gather requirements and then implement solutions.

• Use methodology and tooling to identify design risks early, accelerate iteration, and improve confidence in performance and implementation tradeoffs.

• Contribute across multiple aspects of software and hardware development as the first-party silicon program and its development methodology evolve.

You might thrive in this role if

• You have strong software engineering skills in C++, Python, Rust, or similar systems-oriented languages.

• You have experience building engineering infrastructure, developer tools, simulation frameworks, EDA/CAD tooling, compilers, or verification systems.

• You understand digital design and computer architecture well enough to translate silicon-development needs into useful software abstractions.

• Have experience integrating RTL and IP components into an SoC.

• You have designed APIs, object models, or data models for complex systems and care about extensibility, correctness, and usability.

• You are comfortable automating multi-stage workflows, building regression systems, and improving reproducibility across teams.

• You can reason across architecture, design, verification, performance modeling, and software boundaries.

• You enjoy partnering closely with domain experts and turning loosely defined engineering needs into durable tools and methodologies.

• You thrive in rapidly evolving environments and can balance immediate program needs with longer-term platform quality.

To comply with U.S. export control laws and regulations, candidates for this role may need to meet certain legal status requirements as provided in those laws and regulations.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity.

We are an equal opportunity em

Responsibilities

• Develop and scale design methodologies for rapid first-party chip development and apply them to construct complex custom chips
• Create abstractions that allow hardware structures, configurations, experiments, and results to be represented consistently across tools
• Automate high-value engineering workflows and improve their reproducibility, observability, testability, and ease of use
• Partner with architects, RTL designers, verification engineers, compiler engineers, and systems software engineers to gather requirements and then implement solutions
• Use methodology and tooling to identify design risks early, accelerate iteration, and improve confidence in performance and implementation tradeoffs
• Contribute across multiple aspects of software and hardware development as the first-party silicon program and its development methodology evolve

Requirements

• Strong software engineering skills in C++, Python, Rust, or similar systems-oriented languages
• Experience building engineering infrastructure, developer tools, simulation frameworks, EDA/CAD tooling, compilers, or verification systems
• Understand digital design and computer architecture well enough to translate silicon-development needs into useful software abstractions
• Experience integrating RTL and IP components into an SoC
• Designed APIs, object models, or data models for complex systems and care about extensibility, correctness, and usability
• Comfortable automating multi-stage workflows, building regression systems, and improving reproducibility across teams
• Reason across architecture, design, verification, performance modeling, and software boundaries
• Enjoy partnering closely with domain experts and turning loosely defined engineering needs into durable tools and methodologies
• Thrive in rapidly evolving environments and can balance immediate program needs with longer-term platform quality
• Candidates may need to meet certain legal status requirements to comply with U.S. export control laws and regulations