Software Engineer, TPU Compilers

Workload - San Francisco

About the Team

Our Inference team brings OpenAI’s most capable research and technology to the world through our products. We empower consumersant and efficient model inference, as well as accelerating research progression via model inference.

About the Role

We’re looking for an engineer to lead the optimization of OpenAI’s state-of-the-art frontier models on TPUs. You will own performance across the full forward pass, from model code through kernels to execution on the hardware.

You’ll have broad technical ownership: identifying performance bottlenecks, choosing the most impactful improvements, and carrying them through implementation and validation. We welcome experience gained through either training or inference, with a strong foundation in optimizing real workloads on TPUs.

In this role, you will:

• Optimize model execution on TPUsance across the complete forward pass and the interactions between model code, kernels, and hardware.
• Profile workloads, identify bottlenecks, and implement improvements to latency, throughput, and hardware utilization.
• Develop and optimize kernels, using an understanding of the surrounding model to guide implementation choices.
• Explore techniques such as quantization to improve inference efficiency while preserving model quality.
• Build benchmarks and tools to measure performance, validate correctness, and guide optimization work.
• Partner with researchers and engineers to support new model architectures and bring performance improvements into production.

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Have practical experience optimizing machine learning workloads on TPUs, through training, inference, or both.
• Understand modern model architectures and how their computation maps onto accelerator hardware.
• Can connect detailed kernel behavior to the performance of a complete model and work across these layers of the stack.
• Bring strong software engineering skills and a systematic approach to profilingance improvements.
• Take ownership of open-ended technical problems and can identify priorities, make design decisions, and deliver working solutions.
• Enjoys collaborating with researchers and engineers, learning unfamiliar parts of a system, and communicating technical tradeoffs.
• Have experience with quantization or attention kernels, which would be especially useful in this role.

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 the full spectrum of humanity.

We are an equal opportunity employeration, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable lawation technology systems and related data security obligations.

To notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant. No response will be provided to inquiries unrelated to job posting compliance.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities.

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.

Compensation

$380K – $500K + Offers Equity

The base pay offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factorsance-related bonus(es) for eligible employees, and the following benefits.

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance for you and your family, with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts
• Pre-tax accounts for Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and commuter expenses (parking and transit)
• 401(k) retirement plan with employer match
• Paid parental leave (up to 24 weeks for birth parents and 20 weeks for non-birthing parents), plus paid medical and caregiver leave (up to 8 weeks)
• Paid time off: flexible PTO for exempt employees and up to 15 days annually for non-exempt employees
• 13+ paid company holidays, and multiple paid coordinated company office closures throughout the year for focus and recharge, plus paid sick or safe time (1 hour per 30 hours worked, or more, as required by applicable state or local law)
• Mental health and wellness support
• Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage
• Annual learning and development stipend to fuel your professional growth
• Daily meals in our offices, and meal delivery credits as eligible
• Relocation support for eligible employees
• Additional taxable fringe benefits, such as charitable donation matching and wellness stipends, may also be provided.

More details about our benefits are available to candidates during the hiring process.

This role is at-will and OpenAI reserves the right to modify base pay and other compensation components at any time based on individual performance, team or company results, or market conditions.