Lead Infra Cost & Efficiency Engineer

OpenAI, Inc.; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

OpenAI, Inc. is seeking a Software Engineer to lead design, implementation, and operation of systems for infrastructure cost and efficiency.

You will build platforms that explain where spend goes, identify opportunities to improve utilization, and help teams plan capacity with measurable impact. The role requires 7+ years of production software and distributed systems experience, with hands-on coding and cross-team ownership.

Qualifications

• 7+ years designing, building, and operating production software and distributed systems with ownership across multiple teams.
• Built systems for infrastructure efficiency, cloud cost attribution, usage metering, budgeting, forecasting, or capacity management.

Responsibilities

• Define technical direction and roadmap for infrastructure cost and efficiency systems and lead projects from definition to operation.
• Build billing, usage metering, and cost attribution systems that connect spend to resources and teams.
• Develop data pipelines and models that combine cloud billing, inventory, and utilization signals into a cost view.
• Create APIs, reporting tools, and controls to help teams manage consumption and budgets.
• Provide technical leadership and mentor engineers, ensuring correctness, scalability, and reliability.

Skills

Distributed systems

Cost attribution

Budgeting & forecasting

Data pipelines

Ownership across teams

Tools

Kubernetes

Cloud platforms

Job description

OpenAI, Inc. is seeking a Software Engineer to lead design, implementation, and operation of systems for infrastructure cost and efficiency.

You will build platforms that explain where spend goes, identify opportunities to improve utilization, and help teams plan capacity with measurable impact. The role requires 7+ years of production software and distributed systems experience, with hands-on coding and cross-team ownership.