Principal Network Engineer / Architect

About the Team
OpenAI’s Industrial Compute team builds and operates the foundation that powers our research and products. Networking is at the core of this effort: our ability to train and serve cutting-edge models depends on reliable, scalable, and cost-efficient global WAN connectivity. The team works across self-built data centers, colocation facilities, and cloud environments to design and deliver a high-performance fabric that connects millions of GPUs and AI systems worldwide.

About the Role
We are hiring a Principal Network Architect to define and evolve OpenAI’s global network architecture. This is a deeply technical and strategic role: you will set the routing, topology, and control-plane strategy that shapes how OpenAI’s network operates across clouds, PoPs, and self-built data center locations.

You’ll work closely with infrastructure engineering, research, and operations to design scalable, resilient, and cost-efficient architectures for AI workloads that push the limits of modern networking. This role focuses on logical design, strategy, and engineering and will be a key partner to the compute team as the physical backbone is built out.

In this role, you will:

• Define and evolve OpenAI’s global routing and backbone architecture, spanning self-built data centers, partner colo, and hyperscaler networks.

• Design backbone topologies and traffic engineering strategies to deliver high throughput, low latency, and fault tolerance at multi-terabit scale.

• Develop multicloud interconnect strategy and BGP policy, including peering, security posture, route leak mitigation, and interoperability across heterogeneous networks.

• Architect control plane, automation, and observability systems to operate a global backbone at scale.

• Model and plan for evolving topologies to support new workload patterns (e.g., multi-terabit east–west, low-latency fan-in/fan-out).

• Partner with infrastructure and compute engineering teams to integrate networking capabilities into higher-level orchestration and platform systems.

• Provide technical leadership and clear architectural direction across teams working on global network operations.

You may be a good fit if you:

• Have deep experience designing and operating global backbone networks at hyperscale or large cloud/enterprise scale.

• Are fluent in global routing, traffic engineering, topology design, BGP policy, and modern control-plane architectures.

• Have led the design and evolution of networks spanning multiple clouds, private backbones, and diverse PoPs.

• Understand operational realities at scale and design for resilience, observability, and automation from first principles.

• Are comfortable working in a fast-moving, ambiguous environment and setting strategy in parallel with execution.

• Enjoy partnering closely with build, infra, and research teams to make architectural decisions that unlock future capabilities.

This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We use a hybrid work model of three days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.

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.

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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