Operating Systems Engineer, Connectivity & Networking | Consumer Devices
About this role
Engineers who enjoy tackling zero-to-one challenges at the intersection of hardware, software, and artificial intelligence will find a natural fit within this group. The Consumer Devices team at OpenAI builds the next generation of products designed to bring powerful AI into everyday life, operating across systems software and product engineering to deliver reliable platforms.
In this capacity, the OS Engineer for Connectivity and Networking will design, develop, and maintain the operating system capabilities that enable secure and efficient communication across products and systems. Work spans Wi-Fi and Bluetooth frameworks, IP networking, and advanced network services, requiring close collaboration with hardware, firmware, security, platform, and application teams to carry solutions from investigation through production.
This role exists to establish the connectivity and networking foundations that support communication across OpenAI products. Ideal candidates bring substantial hands-open experience in operating-system frameworks and system services, paired with proficiency in C++ and a strong understanding of IP networking principles.
What you will do
- Design, implement, and maintain operating system services, frameworks, and APIs for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and IP networking.
- Build connection management, network configuration and selection, service discovery, and routing capabilities.
- Develop network services and policies for secure communication, traffic management, and isolation across varied network environments.
- Investigate correctness, concurrency, interoperability, and reliability issues across OS components, protocol stacks, and application interfaces.
- Improve latency, throughput, resource use, and power efficiency using tracing, profiling, and repeatable measurements.
- Build diagnostic tools, representative workloads, and automated tests to validate real-world reliability and failure recovery.
- Partner with hardware, firmware, security, platform, and application engineers to translate system requirements into shipped capabilities.
What you need
- Substantial hands-on experience developing Wi-Fi and Bluetooth functionality in operating-system frameworks, system services, or connectivity middleware.
- Strong understanding of IP networking, including IPv4/IPv6, TCP/UDP, DNS, DHCP, routing, and socket behavior.
- Experience implementing advanced networking capabilities in one or more areas such as routing, VPNs, tunneling, traffic management, or network isolation.
- Experience designing and maintaining platform APIs and the services behind them, including connection lifecycle management.
- Proficiency in C++ for systems development, covering concurrent programming, memory ownership, and resource lifetime management.
- Strong understanding of asynchronous systems, interprocess communication, and failure handling.
- Experience diagnosing complex connectivity issues using system traces, protocol captures, logs, and structured debugging.
- Ability to work across disciplines, make sound technical tradeoffs, and carry solutions from investigation through implementation and validation.
Nice to have
- Have delivered connectivity capabilities in shipped products and resolved interoperability issues across software stacks and third-party implementations
- Bring depth in transport protocols and performance, including QUIC, congestion control, multi-path networking, or operation across multiple network interfaces
- Have experience with network virtualization, proxies, NAT, firewalls, or policy enforcement within an operating system
- Have improved connectivity performance or power consumption, supported by repeatable measurements and regression coverage
- Are proficient in Rust for systems programming
Benefits
- Offers Equity
Skills and tech stack
Questions candidates ask
What is the compensation for this role?
The salary range for this position is $230K – $385K alongside offered equity.
Where is the position located?
The role is based in San Francisco.
What team will I be working with?
You will be working within the Consumer Devices team, which builds the next generation of products that bring powerful AI into people’s everyday lives.
What programming languages are required?
Proficiency in C++ for systems development is required, while proficiency in Rust for systems programming is listed as a nice-to-have.