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OpenAIOpenAISan Francisco, CA

Performance Modeling Engineer

Develops and maintains performance modeling tools and frameworks to evaluate AI system behavior, analyze tradeoffs in compute, memory, networking, and storage. Collaborates with architects on simulations and insights for infrastructure design; requires strong software/modeling background and system architecture knowledge.

266k – 445k/yr
HybridDevOps / SRE

About the role

Key Responsibilities

  • Develop and maintain performance modeling tools and frameworks.
  • Build models to evaluate system behavior across: compute, memory, and interconnect subsystems; distributed system scaling and bottlenecks.
  • Run simulations and analytical models to support architectural tradeoff analysis.
  • Collaborate with performance modeling lead and system architects to answer forward-looking design questions.
  • Analyze and interpret modeling outputs, translating results into actionable insights.
  • Validate models against real system measurements and workload behavior.
  • Contribute to improving modeling fidelity, usability, and scalability.

Qualifications

  • Strong software engineering or modeling background (e.g., simulation, systems modeling, or performance analysis).
  • Familiarity with system architecture fundamentals (compute, memory, networking).
  • Experience with programming and building technical tools or frameworks.
  • Ability to reason about performance bottlenecks and scaling behavior.
  • Strong analytical skills and comfort working with quantitative models.
  • Ability to collaborate across teams and learn new system domains quickly.

Preferred Skills

  • Exposure to AI/ML workloads or distributed systems.
  • Experience with simulation tools, performance modeling, or systems analysis.
  • Familiarity with data center infrastructure or large-scale systems.
  • Experience working with performance data, benchmarking, or profiling tools.
  • Interest in system architecture and hardware/software co-design.

Skills

Performance ModelingSimulation ToolsSystems ModelingPythonC++Distributed SystemsAi/Ml WorkloadsBenchmarkingProfiling ToolsData Center Infrastructure

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