OpenAI
Camera Firmware Engineer, Consumer Products
OpenAI, San Francisco, California, United States, 94199
Camera Firmware Engineer, Consumer Products
Join us to apply for the Camera Firmware Engineer, Consumer Products role at OpenAI.
About The Team The Consumer Products team at OpenAI builds end‑to‑end hardware and software systems that bring AI into the physical world. We work at the intersection of custom silicon, embedded systems, operating systems, and cloud services to deliver reliable, production‑ready devices at scale.
About The Role As a Camera Firmware Engineer, you will own low‑level camera enablement on custom hardware—from early board bring‑up through stable production capture. You will develop and maintain the firmware and software that makes camera sensors reliable, controllable, and debuggable, forming the foundation for higher‑level camera pipelines and product features.
In This Role, You Will
Bring up new camera sensors and modules on prototype and production boards, including link stability, sensor control, and correct power, reset, and clock sequencing.
Develop and maintain low‑level camera software, including sensor drivers, board configuration, and camera subsystem integration across hardware revisions.
Enable and validate core capture paths for development and production, including RAW capture for debugging, still capture, and hardware‑accelerated video encode and streaming with stable timestamps and long‑duration reliability.
Stand up camera control and repeatability features, including basic 3A loop exposure, manual overrides and locks, and deterministic presets to support validation and debugging.
Build and maintain camera bring‑up tooling, such as capture scripts, automated sweeps, manifests, and debugging utilities that make issues reproducible and easy to triage.
Partner closely with electrical engineering, camera pipeline owners, and systems teams to define interfaces, unblock integration, and keep the camera stack stable as the device evolves.
You Might Thrive In This Role If You
Deep experience shipping embedded camera systems, including sensor bring‑up, driver development, and board‑level debugging.
Strong C/C++ experience with embedded or Linux‑based systems; comfortable debugging across kernel and userspace boundaries.
Hands‑on understanding of common camera hardware interfaces (for example, MIPI CSI and sensor control buses) and the practical realities of bring‑up, including power, reset, clocking, and sequencing.
Proven track record of building reliable capture paths and effective debug workflows that accelerate iteration through reproducible failures and well‑scoped fixes.
Preferred Qualifications
Experience with common mobile or embedded SoC camera stacks and vendor frameworks.
Experience integrating and debugging hardware acceleration blocks adjacent to camera pipelines, such as video encode and decode paths.
Familiarity building higher‑level capture pipelines (for example, GStreamer) on top of low‑level camera enablement.
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.
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.
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About The Team The Consumer Products team at OpenAI builds end‑to‑end hardware and software systems that bring AI into the physical world. We work at the intersection of custom silicon, embedded systems, operating systems, and cloud services to deliver reliable, production‑ready devices at scale.
About The Role As a Camera Firmware Engineer, you will own low‑level camera enablement on custom hardware—from early board bring‑up through stable production capture. You will develop and maintain the firmware and software that makes camera sensors reliable, controllable, and debuggable, forming the foundation for higher‑level camera pipelines and product features.
In This Role, You Will
Bring up new camera sensors and modules on prototype and production boards, including link stability, sensor control, and correct power, reset, and clock sequencing.
Develop and maintain low‑level camera software, including sensor drivers, board configuration, and camera subsystem integration across hardware revisions.
Enable and validate core capture paths for development and production, including RAW capture for debugging, still capture, and hardware‑accelerated video encode and streaming with stable timestamps and long‑duration reliability.
Stand up camera control and repeatability features, including basic 3A loop exposure, manual overrides and locks, and deterministic presets to support validation and debugging.
Build and maintain camera bring‑up tooling, such as capture scripts, automated sweeps, manifests, and debugging utilities that make issues reproducible and easy to triage.
Partner closely with electrical engineering, camera pipeline owners, and systems teams to define interfaces, unblock integration, and keep the camera stack stable as the device evolves.
You Might Thrive In This Role If You
Deep experience shipping embedded camera systems, including sensor bring‑up, driver development, and board‑level debugging.
Strong C/C++ experience with embedded or Linux‑based systems; comfortable debugging across kernel and userspace boundaries.
Hands‑on understanding of common camera hardware interfaces (for example, MIPI CSI and sensor control buses) and the practical realities of bring‑up, including power, reset, clocking, and sequencing.
Proven track record of building reliable capture paths and effective debug workflows that accelerate iteration through reproducible failures and well‑scoped fixes.
Preferred Qualifications
Experience with common mobile or embedded SoC camera stacks and vendor frameworks.
Experience integrating and debugging hardware acceleration blocks adjacent to camera pipelines, such as video encode and decode paths.
Familiarity building higher‑level capture pipelines (for example, GStreamer) on top of low‑level camera enablement.
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.
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.
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