Field Engineer
AI summary of the role
OpenAI Robotics seeks a Field Engineer to own the day-to-day technical health of robotic workcells used in data acquisition operations.
What you’ll do
- Serve as engineering owner for keeping a fleet of robotic workcells online in daily operation.
- Diagnose, fix, mitigate, or escalate issues spanning mechanics, electronics, controls, software interfaces, logs, and configuration.
- Build or spec lightweight hardware and software tools that improve monitoring, diagnostics, recovery, and handoffs.
- Create documentation, SOPs, and diagnostic playbooks that turn engineering insight into repeatable floor practice.
What you’ll bring
- 5+ years of experience supporting electromechanical, robotic, automation, or human-in-the-loop systems in production, R&D, lab, field, or operational environments.
- Ability to independently troubleshoot messy real-world failures under time pressure.
- Comfortable working across mechanical, electrical, controls, and software boundaries.
- Strong organizational habits around tickets, documentation, shift-to-shift communication, and follow-through.
Technologies
robotics · workcells · Linux · CAD · robot middleware · motion-control stacks · observability · incident response · SOPs · diagnostic playbooks
About OpenAI
Builds frontier AI models (GPT series) and ships them as ChatGPT consumer/enterprise products plus a developer API for the broader AI ecosystem.
Private Late
Source and classification
Internal deployment & tooling · Evidence for this classification:
About the Team The OpenAI Robotics team is focused on unlocking general-purpose robotics and pushing towards AGI-level intelligence in dynamic, real-world settings. Working across the entire model stack, we integrate cutting-edge hardware and software to explore a broad range of robotic form factors. We strive to seamlessly blend high-level AI capabilities with the constraints of physical systems to improve peoples’ lives. About the Role OpenAI Robotics depends on high-quality real-world robot data from a large, live operational environment. That environment has many deployed workcells, changing configurations, and little tolerance for downtime. We are seeking a Field Engineer to help keep that environment running well. You will own the day-to-day technical health of robotic workcells used in ongoing data acquisition operations, diagnose and resolve failures across hardware and
More from the job description
About the Team The OpenAI Robotics team is focused on unlocking general-purpose robotics and pushing towards AGI-level intelligence in dynamic, real-world settings. Working across the entire model stack, we integrate cutting-edge hardware and software to explore a broad range of robotic form factors. We strive to seamlessly blend high-level AI capabilities with the constraints of physical systems to improve peoples’ lives. About the Role OpenAI Robotics depends on high-quality real-world robot data from a large, live operational environment. That environment has many deployed workcells, changing configurations, and little tolerance for downtime. We are seeking a Field Engineer to help keep that environment running well. You will own the day-to-day technical health of robotic workcells used in ongoing data acquisition operations, diagnose and resolve failures across hardware and software, and build the practical tools, documentation, and support workflows that make operators and technicians more effective. The work is close to the floor, close to the failure modes, and close to the research impact. This role sits at the intersection of software, robotics hardware, and live operations. The best people in it are practical, technically sharp, calm under pressure, and motivated by making real systems work reliably at scale. This role will be based in San Francisco, CA 5 days pe [... source excerpt omitted ...] teams improve system design. You might thrive in this role if you: Have 5+ years of experience supporting electromechanical, robotic, automation, or human-in-the-loop systems in production, R&D, lab, field, or operational environments. Can independently troubleshoot messy real-world failures under time pressure, where symptoms and root causes are often different. Are comfortable working across mechanical, electrical, controls, and software boundaries, including logs, configurations, and basic software debugging. Have strong organizational habits around tickets, documentation, shift-to-shift communication, and follow-through. Communicate clearly with operators, technicians, sh [... source excerpt omitted ...] g unnecessary complexity. Hold a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechatronics, Robotics, Computer Engineering, or a related field. Preferred qualifications Familiarity with robot middleware, motion-control stacks, Linux-based systems, service debugging, or real-time debugging tools. Experience with fleet operations, internal tools, observability, support platforms, workflow automation, or incident response. Experience troubleshooting complicated electrical assemblies, wire harnesses, instrumentation, or hardware-software integration issues. Ability to use CAD for small components, fixtures, brackets, or light modifications to existing assembli
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