Research Engineer, AI for Chip Design

About this role

OpenAI is seeking a Research Engineer to apply AI and reinforcement learning to semiconductor design challenges. You'll build RL environments, develop tool-use approaches for chip design tasks, and run experiments that help models optimize power, performance, and area while maintaining correctness.

What you'll do

• Build reinforcement learning environments and evaluation frameworks for RTL generation, design verification, and physical design optimization
• Develop and test methods enabling AI models to effectively use chip-design tools and improve PPA metrics
• Design rigorous experiments with baselines and measure generalization across new tasks and designs
• Debug failures in model behavior, reward signals, evaluation tools, and experiment infrastructure
• Accelerate iteration cycles through improved tooling, faster evaluations, and better proxy reward functions
• Convert successful experiments into reusable research code and training workflows

What they're looking for

• Strong programming and software debugging
• Reinforcement learning and applied ML research
• Building tool-using agents and reward functions
• Experimental design and statistical analysis
• Independent problem-solving on ambiguous tasks
• Distributed training and research infrastructure (nice to have)
• RTL/Verilog, EDA tools, or chip design automation (nice to have)
• Clear technical communication and cross-team collaboration