Backend Engineer, Image Generation at Scale

OpenAI; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 185,000 - 305,000; Full time

Job summary

OpenAI is seeking a seasoned Backend Engineer for the Image Generation team to build the systems that power image creation and editing within ChatGPT. You will develop scalable APIs, services, and infrastructure to support multimodal AI workflows at global scale.

You will collaborate across researchers, product, and platform teams to deliver reliable, performant experiences to millions of users worldwide, shaping architectural decisions and driving operational excellence.

Qualifications

• Experience building and operating large-scale backend or distributed systems.
• Strong proficiency in modern backend technologies and cloud-native architectures.
• Experience designing APIs and service-oriented architectures.
• Analytical and data-informed decision making.
• Ownership mindset and ability to navigate ambiguity.
• Interest in multimodal AI and infrastructure powering visual creation.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate backend systems powering image generation and editing.
• Develop scalable APIs, services, and infrastructure for multimodal workflows.
• Optimize reliability, latency, throughput, and cost at scale.
• Collaborate with researchers to productionize new capabilities.
• Work with Android, iOS, web, and full-stack engineers for end-to-end experiences.
• Drive architectural decisions across storage, serving, orchestration, platform.
• Use data and experiments to improve UX, performance, and efficiency.
• Contribute to engineering culture through leadership and mentoring.

Skills

Backend systems

Distributed systems

APIs design

Cloud-native

Data-driven decisions

Ownership

Job description

OpenAI is seeking a seasoned Backend Engineer for the Image Generation team to build the systems that power image creation and editing within ChatGPT. You will develop scalable APIs, services, and infrastructure to support multimodal AI workflows at global scale.

You will collaborate across researchers, product, and platform teams to deliver reliable, performant experiences to millions of users worldwide, shaping architectural decisions and driving operational excellence.