Camera ISP Software Engineer, Consumer Products

ABOUT THE TEAM

The Consumer Products team at OpenAI builds and ships end-to-end hardware and software experiences that bring frontier AI into the physical world. We work across industrial design, hardware engineering, embedded systems, and AI research to create category-defining consumer devices that feel intuitive, reliable, and deeply integrated with OpenAI’s models.

Within this organization, the Camera team is responsible for delivering robust, production-ready imaging systems that operate under real-world constraints such as motion, power, latency, and manufacturing variation. Our work spans early silicon and board bring-up through mass production, and directly supports both user-facing experiences and on-device perception for AI-driven features.

We operate as a small, highly technical team with deep ownership, close cross-functional collaboration, and a strong bias toward shipping high-quality products rather than incremental demos.

ABOUT THE ROLE

As a Camera ISP Software Engineer, you will own end-to-end ISP bring-up and tuning across prototype and production hardware. You’ll work across software tuning and hardware-accelerated pipelines to deliver stable, high-quality imaging under real-world constraints such as motion, power, and manufacturing variation.

This role is ideal for engineers who thrive in ambiguous early-stage environments, enjoy deep technical ownership, and take pride in shipping production-grade imaging systems.

This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We use a hybrid work model of four days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.

IN THIS ROLE, YOU WILL:

- Own end-to-end ISP tuning and bring-up, from early prototypes through production hardware.

- Tune core 3A and image-quality blocks including AE, AWB, AF, noise reduction (spatial and temporal), sharpening, tone mapping, color correction, HDR/WDR, flicker mitigation, lens shading, defect pixel correction, and related ISP stages.

- Build repeatable capture and evaluation workflows, combining controlled lab sweeps with real-world validation.

- Validate robustness across sensor, module, and manufacturing variation with clear, defensible success criteria.

- Deliver production-grade tuning artifacts, including versioned tuning packs, parameter manifests, change logs, and curated RAW and processed datasets with supporting documentation.

- Partner closely with camera firmware, systems, and hardware teams to debug pipelines, configure sensors, and resolve board-level and silicon-level issues as designs evolve.

YOU MIGHT THRIVE IN THIS ROLE IF YOU:

- Deep experience shipping ISP tuning for embedded or mobile camera products, from bring-up through production.

- Strong fundamentals across 3A (AE/AWB/AF), noise modeling, sharpening and detail trade-offs, tone mapping, and color pipelines.

- Proven ability to run data-driven tuning loops, including repeatable capture, rigorous evaluation, and disciplined versioning of tuning artifacts.

- Hands-on experience debugging end-to-end camera pipelines on real hardware, including RAW capture, processed outputs, and hardware-accelerated paths.

- Ability to collaborate cross-functionally and translate system-level constraints (power, latency, motion, reliability) into concrete tuning decisions and validation plans.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

- Experience with common mobile or embedded SoC camera stacks and vendor frameworks.

- Experience tuning imaging pipelines explicitly for downstream machine-learning consumers, with iteration driven by model feedback.

- Experience designing motion-aware temporal imaging strategies that remain stable under rapid device or scene motion.

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 https://cdn.openai.com/policies/eeo-policy-statement.pdf.

Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates. 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.

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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.