--- title: 'Data Engineer, Hardware & Consumer Devices at OpenAI' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/data-engineer-hardware-consumer-devices-openai-san-francisco-9n384nxp2dqc' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-11-05' --- # Data Engineer, Hardware & Consumer Devices at OpenAI - **Company:** [OpenAI](https://feeny.ai/companies/openai) - **Location:** San Francisco, CA - **Compensation:** $295k–$445k - **Employment:** full-time - **Posted:** 2026-10-01 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-05 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/c25fd30e-056e-4a26-af80-7ea1074fc56e ## Job description ## About the team OpenAI is building a new generation of AI-powered consumer devices, creating opportunities to bring increasingly capable AI into people's everyday lives. Our Data Engineering team is responsible for establishing the foundational data infrastructure that supports the development, manufacturing, launch, and ongoing operation of these products. We're building the systems that connect information across the entire device lifecycle, enabling engineering, operations, and Data Science partners to understand product performance, identify problems, and make better decisions. This is an early-stage organization with significant greenfield opportunities. We're looking for engineers who want to shape the technical foundations of a rapidly growing business and establish systems that will scale alongside our products. About the role: As a Data Engineer, you'll design, build, and scale the data infrastructure that powers OpenAI's hardware and consumer devices organization. You'll tackle technically challenging problems involving complex data sources, evolving operational requirements, and systems that need to scale from early development through manufacturing and consumer deployment. Unlike roles focused primarily on supporting individual analytics projects, this position emphasizes building durable, reusable data foundations that enable multiple teams and use cases. You'll have significant ownership over technical decisions, work closely with partners across engineering, manufacturing, operations, and Data Science, and help define how we approach Data Engineering as the organization grows. In this role, you will: - Build foundational data infrastructure: Design and implement reliable, scalable data pipelines, platforms, and datasets that support hardware development, manufacturing, customer operations, and device performance. - Connect complex data ecosystems: Integrate information across manufacturing systems, factory operations, device telemetry, quality assurance, and customer-facing operational systems. - Establish durable data models: Develop reusable datasets and data architectures that enable consistent measurement, investigation, and decision-making across multiple teams. - Enable manufacturing and quality intelligence: Connect manufacturing conditions and production history with downstream product performance, reliability, returns, and failure signals. - Prepare for scale: Design systems that evolve from early-stage development and initial production to increasingly complex operations and large-scale consumer deployment. - Partner across disciplines: Work with hardware and software engineers, manufacturing teams, operations leaders, and Data Scientists to translate emerging requirements into robust technical solutions. - Shape our technical direction: Help establish engineering standards, architectural principles, data quality practices, and infrastructure decisions that will influence the organization for years to come. You might thrive in this role if you: - Are comfortable making architectural decisions as requirements evolve and the right solutions aren't immediately obvious. - Are highly self-directed and can take broad, ambiguous problems from exploration through implementation. - Enjoy working directly with cross-functional partners and understanding how technical decisions affect real products and operational outcomes. - Have a builder's mentality and are energized by creating foundational systems rather than exclusively optimizing mature infrastructure. - Hold a high bar for engineering quality while remaining pragmatic about the speed and flexibility required in an early-stage environment. Minimum Qualifications: - Have exceptional Data Engineering fundamentals and a track record of designing, building, and operating complex data systems. - Bring strong technical judgment around data architecture, distributed systems, data modeling, reliability, and scalability. - Have experience developing production-grade pipelines and infrastructure across heterogeneous data sources. Bonus points if you have: - Experience with hardware, consumer electronics, connected devices, or IoT. - Experience building data infrastructure for manufacturing, factory operations, or supply-chain systems. - Familiarity with device telemetry, reliability engineering, product quality, or failure analysis. - Experience supporting customer operations, technical support, or Trust & Safety. - A track record of building data platforms or foundational infrastructure in a startup or rapidly scaling organization. Prior hardware experience is not required. We value exceptional engineering ability, intellectual curiosity, and the capacity to learn new domains quickly. ## 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](https://cdn.openai.com/policies/eeo-policy-statement.pdf). 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. To notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant, please submit a report through [this form](https://form.asana.com/?d=57018692298241&k=5MqR40fZd7jlxVUh5J-UeA). No response will be provided to inquiries unrelated to job posting compliance. We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this [link](https://form.asana.com/?k=bQ7w9h3iexRlicUdWRiwvg&d=57018692298241). [OpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy](https://cdn.openai.com/policies/global-employee-and-contractor-privacy-policy.pdf) 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. ## About OpenAI ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company with a mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits all of humanity. - **Entity Type**: Private – structured as a nonprofit parent (OpenAI Foundation) governing a for-profit public benefit corporation (OpenAI Group). The company has confidentially submitted a draft S-1 registration statement to the SEC, signaling a potential future IPO. - **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, USA - **Founded**: 2015 - **Founders**: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, John Schulman, Wojciech Zaremba, and others ## Core Business - **Primary industry**: Artificial intelligence research and deployment - **Target customers**: B2B (enterprises via API and platform), B2C (ChatGPT users), and developers (API, open-source models) - **Mission**: To ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) – AI systems that are generally smarter than humans – benefits all of humanity. ## Products & Services - **[ChatGPT](https://openai.com/chatgpt)**: Conversational AI assistant available via web and mobile, used by consumers and integrated into enterprise workflows. - **[GPT-4 API](https://openai.com/product)**: Large language model accessed via API for developers to build AI-powered applications (text generation, summarization, code assistance, etc.). - **[DALL-E](https://openai.com/dall-e-3)**: Image generation model that creates images from natural language descriptions. - **[Whisper](https://openai.com/research/whisper)**: Open-source speech recognition system. - **[OpenAI Agents](https://openai.com/)**: Emerging product category focused on autonomous AI agents that can perform tasks on behalf of users (announced June 2026). ## Market Standing - **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed in the provided sources. Widely reported in the press at ~$300 billion as of early 2026 (post-funding round), but this figure is not confirmed by OpenAI’s official materials. - **Key Metric**: Total funding exceeds $13 billion from Microsoft and other investors. The company has also confidentially filed a draft S-1 with the SEC (see [openai.com](https://openai.com/) – “Confidential submission of draft S-1”). - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Microsoft (strategic partner and largest investor), with additional participation from Thrive Capital, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and others. - **Growth Signals**: Active hiring with 721 open roles posted; expansion into agent-based products; confidential IPO filing; continued deployment of frontier models. ## Competitive Advantages - **First-mover & brand recognition**: ChatGPT became the fastest-growing consumer app in history, establishing OpenAI as the household name in generative AI. - **Research leadership**: Consistently publishes cutting-edge research (GPT-4, DALL-E 3, Whisper, etc.) and attracts top AI talent. - **Compute & infrastructure**: Exclusive partnership with Microsoft provides massive cloud computing resources (Azure) for training and inference. - **Unique governance structure**: The nonprofit parent ensures mission alignment (AGI benefiting humanity) while the for-profit arm can raise capital and scale products. ## Strategic Focus - **Safe AGI development**: Continued emphasis on safety research, alignment, and responsible deployment (e.g., safety systems, model provenance). - **Enterprise expansion**: Growing ChatGPT Enterprise and API offerings for businesses. - **Agentic AI**: Building autonomous agents that can “transform work” (announced June 2026). - **IPO preparation**: Confidential S-1 filing indicates intent to go public, which will require increased financial transparency and governance maturity. ## Why Work Here - **Culture & values**: OpenAI’s stated values include “Humanity first,” “Act with humility,” “Feel the AGI,” and “Ship joy.” Operating principles emphasize agency, creativity, rapid iteration, and intense focus. - **Benefits**: Competitive health insurance, mental healthcare support, 24-week paid birth-parent leave (plus 20 weeks for other parents), generous PTO, annual learning & development stipend, daily meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner), and a domestic conference budget. - **Work environment**: Hybrid/office-based (San Francisco headquarters). The company offers a residency program for researchers and engineers transitioning into AI. - **Impact**: Employees work directly on frontier AI models that shape the industry and society. The mission-driven nature attracts talent passionate about AGI’s societal implications. ## Sources 1. [OpenAI About Page](https://openai.com/about/) 2. [OpenAI Careers Page](https://openai.com/careers/) 3. [OpenAI Job Search](https://openai.com/careers/search) 4. 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