Research Engineer, AI for Chip Design

Skills

About the Role

You will help OpenAI models solve chip-design problems through reinforcement learning, tool use, and evaluation. You'll own experiments from idea through implementation and analysis, build environments and evaluations, run training, investigate failures, and build software that makes experiments reliable and reproducible. Prior chip-design experience is helpful but you can learn the domain.

Requirements

• Strong programming and debugging skills
• Experience with reinforcement learning, model evaluations, post-training, or applied ML research
• Experience building tool-using agents, reward functions, or automated evaluation systems
• Ability to form hypotheses and design experiments
• Ability to work independently on ambiguous problems
• Clear communication across research, software, and hardware
• Candidates may need to meet legal status requirements under U.S. export control laws

Responsibilities

• Build RL environments and evaluations for RTL generation, design verification, and physical design optimization
• Develop and test approaches that help models use chip-design tools and improve power, performance, and area
• Design experiments, establish baselines, and measure improvements
• Investigate failures across model behavior, rewards, evaluation tools, and infrastructure
• Improve iteration speed through better tooling, faster evaluations, and proxy rewards
• Turn successful experiments into reusable research code and training workflows

Benefits

• Equity
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance with employer HSA contributions
• Pre-tax Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and commuter accounts
• 401(k) with employer match
• Paid parental leave (up to 24 weeks for birth parents, 20 weeks for non-birthing parents)
• Paid medical and caregiver leave (up to 8 weeks)
• Flexible PTO for exempt employees; up to 15 days for non-exempt
• 13+ paid company holidays and company office closures
• Paid sick or safe time
• Mental health and wellness support
• Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage
• Annual learning and development stipend
• Daily meals in offices and meal delivery credits
• Relocation support for eligible employees
• Charitable donation matching and wellness stipends