Optical Network 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 Network Engineer to help validate and scale high-speed optical links across large, distributed computing environments. This person will play a critical role in shaping how optics are integrated across our silicon, racks, switches, and systems at hyperscale. You’ll work closely with hardware engineers, system architects, and external partners to evaluate technologies, define product specifications, and guide end-to-end system design.

This role requires both a detailed understanding of the optical technology stack—from pluggables to co-packaged optics—and the ability to evaluate system-level tradeoffs across reliability, energy efficiency, and cost.

In this role, you will:

• Characterize and validate optical modules and links using TP1–TP4 testing metrics and workflows.

• Work with IM/DD pluggable optics (FRO and LPO), NPO and CPO optical form factors, single-mode and multi-mode systems, and perform practical link simulation and design.

• Troubleshoot live network optical issues and drive continuous improvement in large-scale environments.

• Automate testing and data workflows (Python preferred; AI tools welcome).

• Support fiber plant setup, lab routing, patch panels, and network rollout — hands-on with fiber handling.

• Specify switches, transceivers, and optical components for OpenAI deployments across multiple data center environments and geographies.

• Interface with vendors, researchers, and internal stakeholders to assess technology readiness and drive component and system-level evaluations.

• Develop, lead and execute on internal testing strategies to qualify optics in production environments, including CWDM and DWDM systems.

• Contribute to cross-functional architectural efforts involving custom silicon, high-performance interconnects, and global-scale networks.

You might thrive in this role if you have:

• 7+ years of experience in large-scale optical networking or photonic systems design and deployment, including hands-on involvement with system design.

• Ph.D. in Optical Fiber Communication or related field.

• Familiar with coherent optical technology.

• Experience with CMIS-based module management and SONiC.

• Experience with high-density optical modules or interconnect architectures.

• Experience working in small, high-ownership engineering teams that operate across hardware and systems boundaries.

• Strong communication and technical leadership skills with a collaborative, pragmatic approach.

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.

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.

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