Research Engineer, AI for Chip Design

OpenAI
San Francisco
Workplace: HybridFull timeUSD 380,000 - 500,000 annuallyFunction: Research & Scientific (R&D)Skills: ["Independent problem-solving","Experimental judgment","Debugging","Hypothesis formulation","Collaboration"]

Build reinforcement learning environments and evaluation pipelines that help models solve semiconductor chip-design tasks. Own experiments from idea to analysis: implement training and tooling, develop proxy rewards, establish baselines, and measure whether improvements generalize to new designs. Investigate failures across model behavior, rewards, evaluations, and infrastructure, then turn successful work into reusable research code and training workflows.

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FursaFursa
OpenAI
OpenAI
12 hours ago

Research Engineer, AI for Chip Design

āœ“ Verified Job

Canonical indexed version, validated from employer's careers page.

Source: Company careers pageValidated by: Fursa AI
Last checked: 3 hours agoStatus: Live

Job Summary

Build reinforcement learning environments and evaluation pipelines that help models solve semiconductor chip-design tasks. Own experiments from idea to analysis: implement training and tooling, develop proxy rewards, establish baselines, and measure whether improvements generalize to new designs. Investigate failures across model behavior, rewards, evaluations, and infrastructure, then turn successful work into reusable research code and training workflows.
Location: San Francisco
Workplace: Hybrid
Employment Type: Full time
Job Function: Research & Scientific (R&D)

Key Responsibilities

  • ā€¢Build RL environments and evaluations for tasks including RTL generation, design verification, and physical design optimization.
  • ā€¢Develop and test approaches for tool-using models to improve power, performance, and area while preserving correctness.
  • ā€¢Design experiments, establish baselines, and evaluate whether improvements hold up on new tasks and designs.
  • ā€¢Investigate failures across model behavior, rewards, evaluation tools, and experiment infrastructure.
  • ā€¢Improve iteration speed using better tooling, faster evaluations, and proxy rewards, then convert successful work into reusable research code and training workflows.

Pay and Benefits

Salary: USD 380,000 - 500,000 annually
Equity and Bonus:Equity

Key Requirements

  • ā€¢Strong programming and debugging skills with a track record of turning technical ideas into working software.
  • ā€¢Experience with reinforcement learning, model evaluations, post-training, or other applied ML research.
  • ā€¢Experience building tool-using agents, reward functions, or automated evaluation systems.
  • ā€¢Ability to form clear hypotheses, design useful experiments, and distinguish meaningful results from noise or evaluation errors.
  • ā€¢Ability to work independently on ambiguous problems and make practical decisions about what to build or test next.
Experience:Applied ML researchReinforcement learningSemiconductorChip designResearch infrastructure
Skills:Independent problem-solvingExperimental judgmentDebuggingHypothesis formulationCollaboration
Tech Stack:Reinforcement learning (RL)RTL generationDesign verificationPhysical design optimizationRTLVerilogSystemVerilogEDA toolsFormal verificationExperiment orchestrationDistributed trainingEvaluation toolsProxy rewardsTraining workflowsTool-using agentsReward functions

Company Brief

OpenAI
Develops and deploys advanced generative AI models (including ChatGPT and DALLĀ·E) and AI infrastructure, providing APIs and consumer products to accelerate safe AGI for broad benefit.
Industry: AI & Machine Learning
Company Size: Enterprise (1,001+ employees)
Revenue: USD 1B+
Growth: Scaleup
Valuation: Hectocorn (USD 100B+)
Funding: Series E+
Headquarters: San Francisco, United States
Founded: 2015
Glassdoor
Glassdoor: 4.4
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