The role
ABOUT THE TEAM
The Release Engineer team is responsible for building and maintaining the systems that power software delivery—from CI/CD pipelines and artifact management to release automation and fleet telemetry. We ensure software across bootloaders, firmware, operating systems, and cloud services is built reproducibly, validated rigorously, and released safely at scale.
ABOUT THE ROLE
As a Release Engineer, you’ll design, build, and operate release infrastructure that enables reliable, secure, and traceable software delivery across complex multi-component systems. You’ll partner closely with embedded, cloud, and QA teams to ensure that every build—from development to OTA deployment—is fast, verifiable, and production-ready.
We’re looking for engineers who take pride in automation, build reproducibility, and system reliability—and who enjoy building the connective tissue that allows hardware and software to ship together seamlessly.
This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We use a hybrid work model of four days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.
IN THIS ROLE, YOU WILL:
- Design and operate CI/CD pipelines for multi-component builds (bootloader, firmware, OS images, backend, companion apps) using hermetic toolchains.
- Define versioning and branching strategies; automate promotions, changelogs, and artifact retention.
- Integrate unit, integration, and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) test results; quarantine flaky tests, auto-bisect failures, and block unsafe promotions.
- Build A/B OTA update flows with verity and health checks; run staged rollouts and canaries; implement safe rollback and roll-forward strategies.
- Implement code signing for binaries and firmware, generate SBOMs, run vulnerability scanning, and attach build attestations and provenance.
- Manage dashboards and alerts for build health, promotion latency, failure rates, and fleet update telemetry.
YOU MIGHT THRIVE IN THIS ROLE IF YOU:
- Have experience building and operating build and release systems for consumer devices, robotics, mobile, or embedded products.
- Are proficient in scripting and automation languages such as Python or Bash.
- Have strong Linux user-space fundamentals.
- Have experience with GitHub Actions or Buildkite, artifact registries, and reproducible toolchains.
- Have experience managing vendor BSPs and toolchains.
- Have delivered secure OTA or image updates with staged rollouts at scale.
- Are familiar with key management and supply-chain hardening.
- Have a track record of metrics-driven improvement and continuous optimization.
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.
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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.
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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.