Strategic Overview
Software Engineer, Collective Communication at OpenAI is a dev opportunity centered on the specialist responsibilities and outcomes described in the employer's listing.
The published role emphasizes work such as Collaborate closely with ML researchers to design and implement efficient collective operations in C++ and CUDA.
The role is listed for San Francisco with hybrid working arrangement, giving candidates the practical context needed to assess fit before applying. Relevant signals in the listing include Scaling, Systems.
Key information at a glance
About This Role
About the Team
The Workload Networking team is responsible for the collective communication stack used in our largest training jobs. Using a combination of C++ and CUDA we work on novel collective communication techniques that enable efficient training of our flagship models on our largest custom built supercomputers.
The models we train are key ingredients to the AI research progress at OpenAI and the field as a whole, and we continually incorporate learnings from our entire research org into our training platform.
Key Responsibilities & Objectives
- Collaborate closely with ML researchers to design and implement efficient collective operations in C++ and CUDA.
Required Qualifications & Candidate Blueprint
- We’re looking for people who have a background in low level performance critical software. Experience with collective communication is a bonus.
Salary & Benefits
Published compensation: $380K – $500K
Salary Benchmark
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Benchmark uses active employer job postings in our database and excludes this listing. It is not a third-party salary estimate, and currencies are not converted.
Full Job Description
The following is the complete job description supplied by the source. We sanitize unsafe markup and remove external links, but do not shorten or rewrite the employer's source content.
About the Team
The Workload Networking team is responsible for the collective communication stack used in our largest training jobs. Using a combination of C++ and CUDA we work on novel collective communication techniques that enable efficient training of our flagship models on our largest custom built supercomputers.
The models we train are key ingredients to the AI research progress at OpenAI and the field as a whole, and we continually incorporate learnings from our entire research org into our training platform.
About the Role
As a Software Engineer, Networking you will design and implement custom networking collectives that are tightly integrated into our training stack.
We’re looking for people who have a background in low level performance critical software. Experience with collective communication is a bonus.
This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.
In this role, you will:
Collaborate closely with ML researchers to design and implement efficient collective operations in C++ and CUDA.
Ensure that our largest training jobs take full advantage of the different network transports used in our supercomputers.
Work on simulations to inform our future supercomputer network designs.
You might thrive in this role if you:
Have written distributed algorithms using RDMA in the past.
Are comfortable writing low level performance sensitive CPU and/or GPU code.
Are familiar with network simulation techniques.
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.
Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates. 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.
To notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant, please submit a report through this form. No response will be provided to inquiries unrelated to job posting compliance.
We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link.
OpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy
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.
Editor’s Market Perspective (Our Custom Analysis)
Why This Position Matters
This dev opening is a useful opportunity for candidates whose experience matches Scaling, Systems. Its strongest career signal is the scope of the work itself — particularly Collaborate closely with ML researchers to design and implement efficient collective operations in C++ and CUDA. — rather than a generic title alone.
Resume & Application Strategy
For the application, mirror the employer's language where it truthfully matches your background: foreground Scaling, Systems, quantify outcomes from comparable work, and place the most relevant experience near the top of the resume. If the listing specifies tools, platforms, leadership scope, or domain experience, use those exact terms in context instead of presenting an unrelated keyword list.
We organize source-provided information into this independent job-seeker overview. Compensation is shown only when the source provides it; the official listing remains the authority for current requirements and application instructions.