Networking Architect - Optics

About the Team
OpenAI’s Infrastructure team is building the world’s most advanced AI supercomputing platform. This team sits at the intersection of hardware systems, network architecture, and data center strategy. We are responsible for the design, deployment, and optimization of hyperscale systems that power cutting-edge AI models. As we scale our infrastructure globally, we are investing deeply in next-generation optical networking to deliver high-throughput, energy-efficient, and reliable systems.

About the Role
We are seeking a Networking Architect with deep expertise in optics to help define the future of OpenAI’s networking systems. This person will play a central 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:

• Lead OpenAI’s strategy and roadmap for optics and photonics across all layers of the network stack.

• Evaluate emerging technologies, including co-packaged optics, near-package optics, low-power optics (LPO), pluggables, and discrete solutions for use in NICs, accelerators, switches, and interconnects.

• Architect systems for high reliability, taking into account failure modes such as link flaps, component aging, and environmental sensitivities.

• 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 high-performance interconnects, and global-scale networks.

You might thrive in this role if you have:

• 10+ years of experience in optical networking or photonic systems architecture, including hands-on involvement with system design.

• Expertise in the tradeoffs of power, cost, reliability, and density in large-scale optical deployments.

• Familiarity with specifying and integrating optics into hyperscale data center environments.

• Deep knowledge of the current and emerging optics ecosystem, including key players, standards, and supply chains.

• Hands-on experience with lab testing and evaluation of components and systems.

• 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.

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.

For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement .

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with applicable law, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act. 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 . 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 .

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

$360K – $530K + Offers Equity