Software Engineer, Plugin Developer Platform

📋 Job Overview

We’re looking for platform-minded engineers who know what it takes to build a platform developers want to use. You’ll work across developer-facing interfaces, APIs, and backend systems. You’ll own features from the first developer conversation through implementation and release.

🏢 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. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.

✅ Key Responsibilities

• Design and ship APIs, SDKs, and services that developers use to extend ChatGPT and Codex.
• Make plugins easier to create, test, publish, update, and share.
• Improve compatibility and consistency across ChatGPT and Codex, including interactive app experiences.
• Contribute to MCP and other open standards, bringing practical developer needs into their design.
• Work with developers and partners to understand recurring problems and improve the platform, tooling, and documentation.
• Work with Product, Research, Security, and Trust & Safety on permissions, compatibility, and safe, reliable execution.

📌 Required Qualifications

• Have built software that other developers use. Your experience might include an open-source project, an API or SDK, a developer platform, internal tools with real users, or a devtools company.
• Have opinions about APIs and abstractions, and can explain the tradeoffs behind your decisions.
• Enjoy talking with developers and learning what they are trying to build.
• Can move between product questions and technical details, identify what matters, and take work from an unclear problem through to production.
• Are comfortable working across web interfaces and backend systems, and learning unfamiliar parts of the stack.
• Want to help define how developers build software for AI agents, including through open standards such as MCP.

🎁 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

• 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.