Software Engineer, IP Infrastructure

📋 Job Overview

We’re looking for a software engineer to build and improve the backend services behind these workflows. You’ll work primarily in Python, take projects from design through production, and make our systems more reliable and easier to operate as partner integrations evolve.

🏢 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.

🎯 The Role

This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week.

✅ Key Responsibilities

• Build and maintain automated pipelines that transfer model weights, configurations, code, and container images between OpenAI and partner environments
• Implement the validation and business logic that determines how artifacts are prepared and shared
• Improve production reliability through testing, monitoring, useful diagnostics, and robust failure handling
• Integrate services with source control, object storage, and build and container tooling, working closely with the owners of shared infrastructure
• Partner with researchers, security teams, and external engineers to understand requirements and resolve integration problems
• Improve existing workflows and use AI tools where they can make the systems we build more effective

📌 Required Qualifications

• Have strong Python skills and experience building, testing, and debugging backend software
• Have taken a service, pipeline, or automation project from implementation into production and helped keep it reliable
• Enjoy investigating how systems fit together and tracing problems across services and dependencies
• Can turn ambiguous requirements into practical software while exercising sound judgment around sensitive information
• Communicate clearly with technical and nontechnical collaborators and enjoy working with partner engineering teams
• Learn unfamiliar systems quickly and take responsibility for following problems through to resolution

⭐ Desirable Experience

• Experience with cloud services, object storage, containers, or CI/CD is helpful. Our work involves tools such as Docker, Bazel, and Buildkite, but prior expertise in every tool or a particular cloud provider is not required.

🎁 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.

🛂 Visa & Eligibility

OpenAI is 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.