Hardware/Software Co-Design Engineer

About the Team

Our mission at OpenAI is to discover and enact the path to safe, beneficial AGI. To do this, we believe that many technical breakthroughs are needed in generative modeling, reinforcement learning, large scale optimization, active learning, among other topics.

The Scaling team builds robust and scalable software and hardware to support our research efforts. It also offers core development services for mission critical goals and applications. 

We’re expanding our team to work more closely with our partners on hardware optimization and co-design, and are looking for engineers who cut across the stack from at scale ML model/workload understanding through system architecture to microarchitecture. This team will be responsible for working with partners to optimize their hardware for our workloads from early concept stage through production.

About the Role

As an Engineer on our hardware optimization and co-design team, you will co-design future hardware from different vendors for programmability and performance. You will work with our kernel, compiler and machine learning engineers to understand their unique needs related to ML techniques, algorithms, numerical approximations, programming expressivity, and compiler optimizations. You will evangelize these constraints with various vendors to develop and influence future hardware architectures towards efficient training and inference on our models. If you are excited about efficiently distributing a large language model across devices, dealing with and optimizing system-wide/rack-wide networking bottlenecks and eventually tailoring the compute pipe and memory hierarchy of the hardware platform, simulating workloads at different abstractions and working closely with our partners, this is the perfect opportunity!

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:

• Co-design future hardware for programmability and performance with our hardware vendors

• Assist hardware vendors in developing optimal kernels and add support for it in our compiler

• Develop performance estimates for critical kernels for different hardware configurations and drive decisions on compute core and memory hierarchy features

• Build system performance models at different abstraction levels and carry out analysis to drive decisions on scale up, scale out, front end networking

• Work with machine learning engineers, kernel engineers and compiler developers to understand their vision and needs from high performance accelerators

• Manage communication and coordination with internal and external partners

• Influence the roadmap of hardware partners to optimize them for OpenAI’s workloads.

• Evaluate potential partners’ accelerators and platforms.

• As the scope of the role and team grows, understand and influence roadmaps for hardware partners for our datacenter networks, racks, and buildings.

You might thrive in this role if you have:

• 4+ years of industry experience, including experience harnessing compute at scale and optimizing ML platform code to run efficiently on target hardware.

• Strong experience in software/hardware co-design

• Deep understanding of GPU and/or other AI accelerators

• Experience with CUDA, Triton or a related accelerator programming language

• Experience driving Machine Learning accuracy with low precision formats

• Experience with system performance modeling and analysis to optimize ML model deployment

• Strong coding skills in C/C++ and Python

• Are familiar with the fundamentals of deep learning computing and chip architecture/microarchitecture.

• Able to actively collaborate with ML engineers, kernel writers, compiler developers, system engineers, chip architects/microarchitects

These attributes are nice to have:

• PhD in Computer Science and Engineering with a specialization in Computer Architecture, Parallel Computing. Compilers or other Systems

• Strong understanding of LLMs and challenges related to their training and inference 

Benefits and Perks

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance for you and your family

• Mental health and wellness support

• 401(k) plan with 4% matching

• Unlimited time off and 18+ company holidays per year

• Paid parental leave (20 weeks) and family-planning support

• Annual learning & development stipend ($1,500 per year)

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.

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with applicable law, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act. 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.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link.

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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.