Description
Job Posting
Offensive Security Engineer, Hardware
Location
San Francisco
Employment Type
Full time
Department
Security
Compensation
- San Francisco$293K – $490K • Offers Equity
The base pay offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factors, including market location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. If the role is non-exempt, overtime pay will be provided consistent with applicable laws. 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.
More details about our benefits are available to candidates during the hiring process.
This role is at-will and OpenAI reserves the right to modify base pay and other compensation components at any time based on individual performance, team or company results, or market conditions.
About the Team
Security is at the foundation of OpenAI’s mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. The Security team protects OpenAI’s technology, people, and products. We are technical in what we build but are operational in how we do our work, and are committed to supporting all products and research at OpenAI. Our Security team tenets include: prioritizing for impact, enabling researchers, preparing for future transformative technologies, and engaging a robust security culture.
About the Role
We're seeking an exceptional Principal-level Offensive Security Engineer to challenge and strengthen OpenAI's security posture. This role isn't your typical red team job - it's an opportunity to engage broadly and deeply, craft innovative attack simulations, collaborate closely with defensive teams, and influence strategic security improvements across the organization.
You'll have the chance to not only find vulnerabilities but actively drive their resolution, automate offensive techniques with cutting-edge technologies, and use your unique attacker perspective to shape our security strategy. This role will be primarily focused on continuously testing our hardware products and related services.
In this role you will:
- Collaborate proactively with engineering teams to enhance security and mitigate risks in hardware, firmware, and software.
- Perform comprehensive penetration testing on our diverse suite of products.
- Leverage advanced automation and OpenAI technologies to optimize your offensive security work.
- Present insightful, actionable findings clearly and compellingly to inspire impactful change.
- Influence security strategy by providing attacker-driven insights into risk and threat modeling.
You might thrive in this role if you have:
- 7+ years of hands-on experience or exceptional accomplishments demonstrating equivalent expertise.
- Exceptional skill in code review, identifying novel and subtle vulnerabilities.
- Demonstrated mastery assessing complex technology stacks, including:
- Proven ability to reverse engineer bootrom images, firmware, or silicon-level components.
- Deep familiarity with low-level kernel operations, secure boot processes, and hardware-software interactions.
- Hands-on experience building and validating secure boot chains and threat models.
- Proficiency with hardware debugging tools (UART, JTAG, SWD, oscilloscopes, logic analyzers).
- Solid programming skills in C/C++, Python, or assembly for embedded systems.
- Industry experience securing consumer hardware (e.g., mobile devices, IoT, chipsets).
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills for technical and non-technical audiences.
- Strong intuitive understanding of trust boundaries and risk assessment in dynamic contexts.
- Excellent coding skills, capable of writing robust tools and automation for offensive operations.
- Ability to communicate complex technical concepts effectively through compelling storytelling.
- Proven track record of not just finding vulnerabilities but actively contributing to solutions in complex codebases.
Bonus points:
- Prior experience working in tech startups or fast-paced technology environments.
- Experience in related disciplines such as Software Engineering (SWE), Detection Engineering, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), Security Engineering, or IT Infrastructure.
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 and experiences of our team members.