Operating Systems Engineer, Linux Kernel | Consumer Devices
San Francisco · Full-time · Posted Sep 21, 2026
At a glance
- Employment
- Full-time
- Location
- San Francisco
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 https://cdn.openai.com/policies/eeo-policy-statement.pdf.
- 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 https://form.asana.com/?d=57018692298241&k=5MqR40fZd7jlxVUh5J-UeA. 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 https://form.asana.com/?k=bQ7w9h3iexRlicUdWRiwvg&d=57018692298241.
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.
- Your ownership will extend into the userspace services, libraries, tools, and interfaces needed to deliver complete product features.
Responsibilities
- Design, implement, and maintain Linux kernel subsystem changes that support device capabilities and product requirements.
- Choose appropriate kernel and userspace boundaries, and build the interfaces and supporting components needed to deliver reliable features in shipped products.
- Use tracing, profiling, instrumentation, and diagnostic tools to resolve correctness, concurrency, performance, power, and reliability issues in development and production.
- Develop tests and representative workloads to demonstrate repeatable performance, power, and reliability gains and detect regressions across kernel and userspace.
- Work with hardware, firmware, platform, and application engineers to turn system requirements into understandable, maintainable solutions.
- Prepare reviewable patches, incorporate feedback, and contribute fixes and improvements upstream where appropriate.
- Maintain product-specific changes responsibly as the kernel evolves.
Requirements
- Substantial hands-on experience designing, developing, and debugging one or more Linux kernel subsystems, such as 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.
Skills
- Linux
- C
- Rust
- Memory Management
- Networking
- Storage
- Power Management
- Virtualization
