Why This Job is Featured on The SaaS Jobs
Power efficiency work is rarely highlighted in SaaS career paths, yet it increasingly matters as software companies expand into device-adjacent products and AI-driven experiences. This System Power Engineer role sits at the boundary between embedded hardware and system software, where measurement discipline and repeatable benchmarks shape end user outcomes. The focus on battery life, thermals, charging, and reliability signals work tied to real-world usage rather than purely lab-side optimisation.
For SaaS professionals, the career value comes from building a metrics-first approach to performance that translates well across product lines and platform shifts. Establishing test automation, defining benchmarks, and correlating power profiles with system behaviour are durable skills in modern SaaS organisations that ship continuously and depend on instrumentation to guide decisions. Cross-functional collaboration with electrical and software teams also mirrors how SaaS companies increasingly operate across full-stack surfaces, from cloud services to edge devices.
This role tends to suit engineers who prefer rigorous experimentation, tooling, and clear measurement over feature delivery. It aligns with professionals who enjoy translating ambiguous product experience problems into testable hypotheses and repeatable methodologies. It also fits someone motivated by systems-level tradeoffs and comfortable partnering across disciplines to drive practical performance improvements.
The section above is editorial commentary from The SaaS Jobs, provided to help SaaS professionals understand the role in a broader industry context.
Job Description
About the Team
OpenAI's mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. The Consumer Devices team is building a new generation of AI-powered products that seamlessly integrate hardware and software to create intuitive, transformative experiences. We bring together experts across embedded systems, machine learning, hardware, design, and product engineering to develop products at the intersection of AI and consumer technology.
About the Role
OpenAI is seeking a System Power Engineer to characterize, measure, and optimize power consumption across our embedded hardware products. In this role, you will work closely with Electrical Engineering and system software teams to build power test automation, measure subsystem-level power usage, and drive improvements that directly impact battery life, thermal behavior, charging performance, and system reliability.
You will help establish the methodologies and metrics used to understand and improve power efficiency across real-world product experiences, from controlled lab environments to representative day-in-the-life usage scenarios. This role requires hands-on experience with embedded hardware platforms, power instrumentation, and the analysis of power profiles and system behavior.
This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We use a hybrid work model of four days per week in the office and one day working remotely. Relocation assistance is available for new hires.
In this role, you will:
Define and develop power testing automation to evaluate system behavior across a range of workloads and operating conditions.
Measure subsystem-level power consumption using power breakout probes and other lab instrumentation.
Develop and execute power characterization tests spanning basic workloads, complex mixed-use scenarios, and representative day-of-use experiences.
Partner closely with Electrical Engineers to identify opportunities to improve system power efficiency.
Collaborate with software engineering teams to optimize energy usage in scenarios that impact battery life, device temperature, charging performance, and overall user experience.
Define repeatable power benchmarks and measurement methodologies to assess launch readiness and track performance throughout the product lifecycle.
You might thrive in this role if you have:
Experience measuring and optimizing power consumption on embedded hardware platforms.
Demonstrated experience designing and operating complex hardware-in-the-loop laboratories and orchestrating device testing at scale.
Experience analyzing power profiles and correlating them with overall system performance.
Experience collaborating cross-functionally with Electrical Engineering, embedded software, systems, and product teams.
Experience defining repeatable power benchmarks and launch readiness metrics for hardware products.
Strong proficiency in Python.
Preferred Qualifications
Familiarity with statistics, experimentation methodologies, or data science concepts.
Experience performing subsystem-level power measurements using power breakout probes or similar lab instrumentation.
Experience working with battery-powered consumer products and optimizing for battery life, thermals, and charging performance.
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.
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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