Field Engineer

Excerpt from the original posting

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 per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees. 

In this role, you will: 
- Serve as an 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.

- Partner closely with technicians, operators, and engineering teams to improve scalable fleet support processes.

- 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.

- Bring up and support prototype systems, then help transition them into scalable operations as they mature.

- Manage, triage, and respond to inbound tickets while maintaining clear issue history, ownership, and escalation paths.

- Write lightweight analysis scripts to identify fleet trends, recurring failures, and opportunities to improve reliability.

- Provide concise failure reports and operational feedback that help e…

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