Host Systems Software Engineer

About the Team OpenAI’s Hardware organization develops custom silicon and system-level solutions for the unique demands of advanced AI workloads. The team works across hardware, systems architecture, and software to build infrastructure that enables high-performance, AI-native computing at scale. In close partnership with research, software, and external vendors, we bring up new platforms, integrate emerging technologies, and develop the host-side systems software needed to make these systems performant, reliable, and production-ready. About the Role We’re looking for an experienced systems software engineer to help define and build the host software stack for our custom next-generation AI systems. You will work close to the hardware on performance-critical software, including Linux kernel drivers, high-throughput I/O paths, and system-scale networking and RDMA. This role spans architecture, implementation, platform bring-up, debugging, and performance optimization. You will work across hardware and software boundaries to make new systems usable end to end, from low-level device interfaces through userspace tooling and production validation. In this role you will: - Design, implement, and debug host-side systems software for AI infrastructure, including Linux kernel drivers and supporting userspace components. - Build and optimize software paths for high-throughput, low-latency communication, including RDMA and related networking functionality. - Develop software around PCIe, DMA, NICs, accelerators, memory movement, and device interaction. - Bring up new hardware platforms and diagnose complex issues across kernel, firmware, networking, and hardware boundaries. - Build tooling for integration, testing, diagnostics, observability, qualification, and performance characterization. - Collaborate with hardware, networking, and platform teams to define interfaces and integrate new capabilities. - Work with external vendors where needed to integrate techn