Network Operations Engineer (AI Networking)

TL;DR

Network Operations Engineer (AI Networking): Operating and improving large-scale Ethernet fabrics for GPU clusters and AI infrastructure with an accent on high-availability, observability, and incident response. Focus on automating operational tasks, performing root-cause analysis, and maintaining production network health across 1P and 3P data centers.

Location: Must be based in or able to work onsite in San Francisco, CA

Salary: $157,000 – $221,000 + Equity

Company

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity.

What you will do

• Own the operational health, availability, and reliability of production AI network infrastructure.
• Monitor, troubleshoot, and resolve network incidents to meet strict service-level objectives.
• Execute production network changes, maintenance, and capacity expansions with minimal impact.
• Manage hardware lifecycles, including switch/optics replacements and preventive maintenance.
• Automate repetitive operational tasks using Python to improve efficiency and reduce toil.
• Partner with engineering teams and vendors to support new AI cluster deployments and data center expansions.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience operating large-scale data center, cloud, AI, or HPC network infrastructure.
• Strong knowledge of Layer 2/3 networking, BGP, OSPF, ECMP, MLAG, and VLANs.
• Hands-on experience with platforms such as Cisco NX-OS, Arista EOS, or NVIDIA Spectrum/Cumulus Linux.
• Experience troubleshooting physical infrastructure including fiber optics and high-speed Ethernet links.
• Ability to participate in a 24x7 on-call rotation.
• Must be able to travel up to 30% to data center locations.

Nice to have

• Experience with NVIDIA AI networking technologies and GPU infrastructure (HGX, DGX).
• Knowledge of RoCE v2, RDMA, and lossless Ethernet networking (PFC, ECN, DCQCN).
• Experience with network monitoring tools like Prometheus, Grafana, or streaming telemetry.
• Proficiency in automation frameworks like Terraform or REST APIs.

Culture & Benefits

• Opportunity to work on world-class AI infrastructure at scale.
• Competitive compensation package including equity.
• Commitment to safety, human needs, and diverse perspectives.
• Collaborative environment partnering with top-tier engineering and research teams.