Camera Software Engineer, Consumer Devices

About the Position

Camera Software Engineer, Consumer Devices

Join the Consumer Products team at OpenAI as a Camera Software Engineer for Consumer Devices. You will develop and maintain firmware and software for reliable camera systems, working closely with various teams to ensure robust, debuggable, and production-ready camera systems.

Location

San Francisco, California, United States

Employment Type

Full Time

Compensation

• $347K – $385K • Offers Equity

The base pay offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factors, including market location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. In addition to the salary range listed above, total compensation also includes generous equity, performance-related bonus(es) for eligible employees, and the following benefits:

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance for you and your family, with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts
• Pre-tax accounts for Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and commuter expenses (parking and transit)
• 401(k) retirement plan with employer match
• Paid parental leave (up to 24 weeks for birth parents and 20 weeks for non-birthing parents), plus paid medical and caregiver leave (up to 8 weeks)
• Paid time off: flexible PTO for exempt employees and up to 15 days annually for non-exempt employees
• 13+ paid company holidays, and multiple paid coordinated company office closures throughout the year for focus and recharge, plus paid sick or safe time (1 hour per 30 hours worked, or more, as required by applicable state or local law)
• Mental health and wellness support
• Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage
• Annual learning and development stipend to fuel your professional growth
• Daily meals in our offices, and meal delivery credits as eligible
• Relocation support for eligible employees
• Additional taxable fringe benefits, such as charitable donation matching and wellness stipends, may also be provided.

Responsibilities

In this role, you will:

• Bring up new camera sensors and modules on prototype and production boards, including link stability, sensor control, and correct power, reset, and clock sequencing.
• Develop and maintain low-level camera software, including sensor drivers, board configuration, and camera subsystem integration across hardware revisions.
• Enable and validate core capture paths for development and production, including RAW capture for debugging, still capture, and hardware-accelerated video encode and streaming with stable timestamps and long-duration reliability.
• Stand up camera control and repeatability features, including basic 3A loop exposure, manual overrides and locks, and deterministic presets to support validation and debugging.
• Build and maintain camera bring-up tooling, such as capture scripts, automated sweeps, manifests, and debugging utilities that make issues reproducible and easy to triage.
• Partner closely with electrical engineering, camera pipeline owners, and systems teams to define interfaces, unblock integration, and keep the camera stack stable as the device evolves.

Requirements

• Deep experience shipping embedded camera systems, including sensor bring-up, driver development, and board-level debugging.
• Strong C/C++ experience with embedded or Linux-based systems; comfortable debugging across kernel and userspace boundaries.
• Hands-on understanding of common camera hardware interfaces (for example, MIPI CSI and sensor control buses) and the practical realities of bring-up, including power, reset, clocking, and sequencing.
• Proven track record of building reliable capture paths and effective debug workflows that accelerate iteration through reproducible failures and well-scoped fixes.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with common mobile or embedded SoC camera stacks and vendor frameworks.
• Experience integrating and debugging hardware acceleration blocks adjacent to camera pipelines, such as video encode and decode paths.
• Familiarity building higher-level capture pipelines (for example, GStreamer) on top of low-level camera enablement.

We Offer

• Competitive salary
• Comprehensive benefits package
• Opportunities for professional growth
• Hybrid work model with four days per week in the office
• Relocation assistance for eligible employees

About the Company

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. 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.

Join us in shaping the future of technology.