People Matter

Embedded Software Engineer

OpenAI

OpenAI

Software Engineering
San Francisco, CA, USA
Posted on Jul 12, 2025

We're hiring an embedded software engineer to build reliable, high-performance systems on custom hardware. You’ll own low-level bring-up, write production C/C++ code, and work closely with hardware teams to debug, optimize, and ship. This role spans early prototyping through product launch and requires deep experience with embedded platforms, toolchains, and real-world constraints like memory, power, and latency.

In this role, you will:

  • Design, implement, and debug software for embedded devices

  • Contribute to defining software requirements, interfaces, and test plans

  • Bring up and debug new boards

  • Analyze performance, memory, and power profiles and implement optimizations

  • Investigate field issues, perform root-cause analysis, and deliver robust fixes

  • Foster good software engineering practices

You might thrive in this role if you:

  • 10+ years of professional experience shipping embedded systems

  • Proficiency in C and C++

  • Familiarity with embedded toolchains, operating systems, and debugging tools

  • Experience with both rapid prototyping and scalable product development

Preferred Qualifications

  • Experience with Zephyr RTOS

  • Experience with networking/wireless stacks (BLE, Wi-Fi)

  • Experience with robotic system bring-up

  • Experience with Linux kernel development

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 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.

For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with applicable law, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link.

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At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.