Optical Interconnect System Engineer

About the Team

OpenAI’s Hardware organization develops silicon and system-level solutions designed for the unique demands of advanced AI workloads. The team is responsible for building the next generation of AI-native silicon while working closely with software and research partners to co-design hardware tightly integrated with AI models. In addition to delivering production-grade silicon for OpenAI’s supercomputing infrastructure, the team also creates custom design tools and methodologies that accelerate innovation and enable hardware optimized specifically for AI.

About the Role

We're looking for an Optical Interconnect System Engineer to design, qualify, and deploy scalable optical connectivity for large-scale AI infrastructure. This role spans fiber-system architecture, optical-mechanical integration, validation, reliability, deployment, and serviceability.

You will work with optical, mechanical, electrical, networking, manufacturing, reliability, and data-center teams to translate system needs into practical interconnect solutions. This is a hands-on role for someone who can connect design decisions with installation, qualification, troubleshooting, and long-term operational performance.

In this role, you will:

• Define optical interconnect architectures and requirements across hardware platforms and rack-level systems.
• Design high-density fiber systems for performance, density, reliability, installation, and serviceability.
• Lead optical-mechanical integration and cross-functional design reviews.
• Develop test and qualification plans for optical components, modules, switching platforms, and integrated systems.
• Own optical loss budgets, routing guidelines, handling requirements, and serviceability criteria.
• Support system bring-up, deployment, troubleshooting, failure analysis, and reliability improvement.
• Create reusable design guidelines, interface requirements, and qualification methods.

You might thrive in this role if you have:

Core experience

• Experience designing and deploying large-scale optical systems, including cross-rack integration.
• Experience with high-density fiber architecture, routing, installation, testing, and troubleshooting.
• Hands-on optical-mechanical design and system-integration experience.
• Experience qualifying fiber assemblies and optical interconnect systems for performance and reliability.
• Validation experience across optical modules, switching platforms, and integrated hardware systems.
• Strong system-level problem solving and cross-functional communication skills.

Preferred Experience

• Experience developing optical connectivity for large-scale compute or network systems.
• Experience with scalable fiber infrastructure and modular interconnect design.
• Knowledge of network architecture and topology.
• Experience developing reusable optical-interconnect standards and qualification methods.

To comply with U.S. export control laws and regulations, candidates for this role may need to meet certain legal status requirements as provided in those laws and regulations.

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.

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