Engineering Manager, Networking
Content + Source + Freshness • 14 Feb 2026 • 95% confidence
Offer value
Highly attractive package driven by impressive compensation, equity potential, and the critical technical leadership role within a cutting-edge technology environment.
- Salary: $460,000 – $555,000/year with equity share.
- Leader in AI infrastructure crucial to model development.
- Strong potential for mentorship and team growth.
- High-pressure environment may challenge work-life balance.
Pros
- Competitive salary range (~$460,000 – $555,000/year) with equity options.
- Leadership role in a team that is pivotal to AI model training.
- Opportunities for mentorship and growth within a highly technical environment.
Cons
- Role demand may lead to high-pressure situations.
- Limited flexibility due to leadership responsibilities.
- Possibility of complex project demands with tight deadlines.
Who it's for
Managerial / Senior • Hybrid – 3 days in-office per week
Good fit
- Experienced engineering managers
- Technical leaders interested in networking technology
- Professionals eager to contribute to AI advancements
Not recommended for
- Inexperienced candidates not ready for managerial roles
- Individuals seeking a laidback work structure
- Those unfamiliar with systems engineering or HPC concepts
Motivation fit
Key skills
About the job
Location
San Francisco
Employment Type
Full time
Department
Scaling
Compensation
- $460K – $555K • 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
The Platform Networking team is responsible for the collective communication stack used in our largest training jobs. Using a combination of C++ and CUDA we work on novel collective communication techniques that enable efficient training of our flagship models on our largest custom built supercomputers.
The models we train are key ingredients to the AI research progress at OpenAI and the field as a whole, and we continually incorporate learnings from our entire research org into our training platform.
About the Role
As an Engineering Manager, Networking, you will lead a world-class team focused on building and optimizing the performance-critical systems that power OpenAI’s largest training runs.
We’re looking for someone with a strong technical background in low-level systems work who is excited to step into a full-time management role.
This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.
In this role, you will:
Manage a highly senior team that develops the communication and systems software behind OpenAI’s largest training workloads.
Collaborate closely with ML research and infrastructure teams to ensure system priorities align with evolving model needs.
Grow and support engineers on your team through mentorship, project alignment, and performance development.-
Prioritize across projects and maintain visibility into incoming research demands to keep critical training infrastructure ahead of bottlenecks.
You might thrive in this role if you:
Are an experienced leader
Have experience with low-level systems engineering such as CPU/GPU kernels, RDMA, high-performance networking, or HPC.
Are excited to manage a deeply technical team and guide systems work that directly enables AI research at massive scale.
Enjoy working closely with other high-context teams across research and infrastructure to solve complex, cross-cutting problems.
NCCL (NVIDIA Collective Communications Library) or collectives experience.
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, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity.
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.
Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with applicable law, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.
To notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant, please submit a report through this form. No response will be provided to inquiries unrelated to job posting compliance.
We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link.
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At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.
Compensation Range: $460K - $555K
