Software Engineer, Core Network Engineering

About the TeamThe Core Network Engineering team owns the end-to-end networking stack that connects OpenAI's compute infrastructure — spanning global WAN/edge connectivity, data-center networking, and high-performance host/xPU networking used for large-scale training and inference workloads.This team is responsible for ensuring networking is never the bottleneck to model training efficiency, cluster reliability, or fleet expansion. They design and operate the systems that provide predictable, high-throughput, low-latency connectivity across some of the world's most advanced AI infrastructure.About the RoleWe're looking for engineers to help build and operate the networking foundation behind OpenAI's frontier AI systems.Depending on your background and area of focus, you may work across host networking, datacenter fabrics, or global WAN infrastructure. The problems span low-level systems software, distributed infrastructure, protocol readiness, observability, performance engineering, automation, and large-scale network operations.You'll work on systems where microseconds of latency, tail performance, and network reliability directly impact model training efficiency and production serving performance.This role is ideal for engineers who enjoy operating close to the hardware/software boundary and solving performance-critical infrastructure problems at massive scale.In this role, you will:Design, build, and operate networking systems that support large-scale AI training and inference infrastructureImprove performance, reliability, and scalability across host networking, datacenter fabrics, and WAN systemsDevelop automation for provisioning, configuration management, validation, upgrades, and lifecycle management of networking infrastructureBuild tooling and observability systems for network health, performance analysis, debugging, and automated remediationOptimize network performance across technologies such as RDMA, RoCE, InfiniBand, Ethernet, and high-performance GPU interconnectsDefine and operationalize networking protocols, readiness criteria, and continuous validation systemsPartner closely with compute, storage, hardware, and infrastructure teams to ensure networking scales predictably with fleet growthContribute to architecture decisions around topology design, capacity planning, failure domains, and network reliabilityDiagnose complex distributed systems and networking issues across large heterogeneous compute environmentsYou might thrive in this role if you:Have experience building or operating large-scale networking or distributed systems infrastructureAre comfortable working close to the hardware/software boundaryHave experience with Linux networking, kernel systems, NICs, RDMA, or performance-sensitive infrastructure softwareHave worked with high-performance networking technologies such as InfiniBand, RoCE, DPDK, or large-scale Ethernet fabricsHave experience with datacenter networking, WAN systems, or host networking stacksEnjoy debugging complex systems and performance bottlenecks across multiple layers of the stackAre comfortable writing production software in languages such as C++, Python, or GoHave strong systems fundamentals across networking, operating systems, distributed systems, or infrastructure engineeringAre motivated by building infrastructure that directly accelerates frontier AI research and deploymentAbout OpenAIOpenAI 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.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.