Operating Systems Engineer, Linux Kernel | Consumer Devices
OpenAI · San Francisco
About this role
**ABOUT THE TEAM** OpenAI Consumer Devices is building the next generation of products that bring powerful AI into people’s everyday lives. Guided by OpenAI’s mission to ensure AGI benefits all of humanity, our team combines world-class researchers, engineers, designers, and operators to create useful, intuitive, and responsible technology. You’ll work on ambitious, zero-to-one challenges at the intersection of hardware, software, and AI—helping define a new category of products and shaping how people experience AI in the future. We work across custom silicon, embedded systems, operating systems, and cloud services to build reliable consumer devices and the platforms behind them, connecting kernel development with the broader software stack. **ABOUT THE ROLE** As an Operating Systems Engineer focused on the Linux kernel, you will design, develop, and maintain the kernel capabilities that underpin OpenAI’s consumer devices. You’ll bring deep expertise in one or more Linux kernel subsystems and carry solutions through the higher-level software stack, including userspace services, libraries, tools, and interfaces needed to deliver complete product features. You’ll shape the boundaries between kernel and userspace, make design decisions across the stack, and see your work through development, integration, and production. **IN THIS ROLE, YOU WILL** - **Build kernel capabilities:** Design, implement, and maintain Linux kernel subsystem changes that support device capabilities and product requirements. - **Own features across the stack:** Choose appropriate kernel and userspace boundaries, and build the interfaces and supporting components needed to deliver reliable features in shipped products. - **Debug complex system behavior:** Use tracing, profiling, instrumentation, and diagnostic tools to resolve correctness, concurrency, performance, power, and reliability issues in development and production. - **Measure and validate improvements:** Develop tests and representative workloads to demonstrate repeatable performance, power, and reliability gains and detect regressions across kernel and userspace. - **Partner across disciplines:** Work with hardware, firmware, platform, and application engineers to turn system requirements into understandable, maintainable solutions. - **Contribute sustainable kernel changes:** Prepare reviewable patches, incorporate feedback, and contribute fixes and improvements upstream where appropriate. Maintain product-specific changes responsibly as the kernel evolves. **MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS** - Substantial hands-on experience designing, developing, and debugging one or more Linux kernel subsystems (e.g., memory management, storage, networking, high-speed peripherals, power management, scheduling, or virtualization). - Proficiency in **C** for kernel and low-level systems development. - Strong understanding of kernel concurrency, synchronization, memory ownership, and resource lifetimes. - Experience delivering systems capabilities across kernel and userspace, including designing interfaces and diagnosing problems that cross that boundary. - Understanding of Linux kernel development principles and practices: maintainable designs, appropriate abstractions, reviewable patches, compatibility awareness, and careful validation to prevent regressions. **YOU MIGHT THRIVE IN THIS ROLE IF YOU** - Are proficient in **Rust** for systems programming, with experience developing Linux kernel code in Rust alongside C. - Pa
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