Full Stack Software Engineer, API Experience

OpenAI; New York (NY); On-site; USD 100,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

OpenAI is seeking full stack and frontend engineers to enhance its developer experience. The role includes building and scaling developer-facing products like the OpenAI API Playground, and requires a strong background in TypeScript and React, along with proficiency in backend languages.

A successful candidate will have 5+ years of experience and a passion for creating high-quality product experiences. Join a mission-driven team at the forefront of AI technology.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional engineering experience, excluding internships.
• Strong experience with TypeScript and React.
• Proficiency in one or more backend languages such as Python, Go, or Rust.
• Experience with production APIs and developer tooling.
• Strong product judgment in creating quality experiences.

Responsibilities

• Build and scale developer-facing products including the OpenAI API Playground.
• Own full stack projects end to end, from product definition to implementation.
• Improve systems that generate and publish SDKs and API references.
• Partner with teams to bring new model capabilities to developers.
• Use feedback to enhance the developer experience.

Skills

TypeScript

React

Web application development

Python

Backend languages

Job description

About the Team

OpenAI’s API Platform organization builds the products and infrastructure that help first‑party and third‑party developers build with OpenAI models. We ship the API primitives, tools, SDKs, documentation, playgrounds, and platform experiences that make OpenAI’s capabilities reliable, understandable, and useful in production.

The API Experience team is focused on the end‑to‑end developer experience for the OpenAI API. We own the surfaces developers touch every day: docs, SDKs, the Playground, examples, onboarding flows, and the systems that help developers go from first request to production deployment quickly and confidently.

About the Role

We’re looking for full stack and frontend engineers to help define and build the next generation of OpenAI’s developer experience. In this role, you’ll work across frontend product surfaces, backend systems, SDK and documentation pipelines, and API workflows that serve millions of developers and companies.

You’ll partner closely with product, design, research, API engineering, and developer‑facing teams to make complex AI capabilities simple to understand, easy to test, and safe to launch in real‑world applications. This is a highly cross‑functional role for someone who cares deeply about craft, developer empathy, reliability, and product velocity.

In this role, you will:

• Build and scale developer‑facing products including the OpenAI API Playground, documentation experiences, onboarding flows, examples, and API workflow tools.
• Own full stack projects end to end, from product definition and UX collaboration through backend implementation, launch, measurement, and iteration.
• Improve the systems that generate, maintain, and publish SDKs, API references, docs, guides, and developer examples.
• Partner with API, research, design, and infrastructure teams to bring new model capabilities and API primitives to developers in a clear, usable way.
• Use developer feedback, product analytics, and direct customer insight to identify friction and improve the API experience.
• Help set technical and product direction for a new NYC‑based team with broad ownership over OpenAI’s developer experience.

Your background might look something like:

• 5+ years of professional engineering experience, excluding internships, in product‑driven engineering teams.
• Strong experience with TypeScript, React, and modern web application development.
• Proficiency in one or more backend languages such as Python, Go, Rust, TypeScript, or similar.
• Experience designing, building, and operating production APIs, services, databases, or developer tooling.
• Strong product judgment and a track record of turning ambiguous developer problems into simple, high‑quality product experiences.
• Experience with documentation systems, SDKs, API design, developer tools, or technical content pipelines is a strong plus.
• Comfort working across product, design, engineering, research, and external developer feedback loops.
• Care for reliability, performance, accessibility, and maintainability in production systems.
• Interest in AI and developer platforms; direct ML experience is helpful but not required.
• Ability to thrive in a fast‑moving environment with loosely defined problems and competing priorities.

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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We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link.

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