Principal Security Engineer, Infrastructure Security

OpenAI; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 277,600 - 490,000; Full time

Job summary

A technology company is looking for a Principal Security Engineer to join their Infrastructure Security team, focusing on securing multi-cloud infrastructure and datacenters. The ideal candidate will drive security programs, design controls across diverse layers, and mentor others. Key qualifications include a deep understanding of security principles, expertise in cloud security, and strong problem-solving skills. This position offers a competitive compensation package.

Qualifications

• Deep understanding of security principles and common vulnerabilities.
• Experience with multi-cloud networks and infrastructure security.
• Ability to lead large cross-org initiatives to deliver risk reduction.

Responsibilities

• Own security outcomes for critical infrastructure areas.
• Design security controls across physical to Kubernetes levels.
• Mentor engineers and contribute to security culture.

Skills

Security principles

Analytical and problem-solving skills

Cloud security (AWS, Azure)

Container security

Strong communication skills

Tools

Kubernetes

Authentication/Authorization

Job description

About the Team

Security is at the foundation of OpenAI's mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.

The Security team protects OpenAI's technology, people, and products. We are technical in what we build but are operational in how we do our work, and are committed to supporting all products and research at OpenAI. Our Security team tenets include: prioritizing for impact, enabling researchers, preparing for future transformative technologies, and engaging a robust security culture.

About the Role

OpenAI is seeking a Principal Security Engineer to join our Infrastructure Security (InfraSec) team. InfraSec protects the foundations of OpenAI's research and production environments, spanning GPU supercomputing clusters, multi-cloud infrastructure, datacenters, networking, storage, and the critical services that power our frontier AI models. Our charter includes securing everything from bare-metal hardware and firmware, to Kubernetes clusters and service meshes, to data storage and access pathways for highly sensitive model weights and user data.

As a principal engineer, you will set technical direction and drive execution on high-impact infrastructure security programs, partnering across various orgs at OpenAI to deliver durable controls that raise the security bar at OpenAI scale.

In this role, you will:

• Own end-to-end security outcomes for one or more critical infrastructure areas, including multi-quarter strategy, roadmap, and delivery.
• Design and build security controls across diverse layers (e.g., physical hardware, firmware/BMC, OS, Kubernetes, networks, and CI/CD) to defend against sophisticated adversaries and insider threats.
• Lead cross-functional programs to deploy security enhancements and control changes across broad-scale infrastructure, balancing security guarantees with reliability and velocity.
• Take a generalist approach to building security controls, balancing a mix of security expertise and broad technical skillsets to adapt to evolving challenges.
• Lead and/or drive threat modeling and design reviews for major infrastructure changes, ensuring strong security foundations and operational excellence.
• Mentor and level up engineers across InfraSec and partner teams, contributing to a strong security culture through guidance, reviews, and technical leadership.

You will thrive in this role if you have:

• Deep understanding of security principles, best practices, and common vulnerabilities, including strong security judgment under ambiguity.
• A proactive mindset, with the ability to identify and address security gaps or inefficiencies through automation and tooling.
• Expertise and curiosity about using frontier models and agents to effectively solve security challenges.
• A track record of leading large, cross-org initiatives from concept to rollout, including navigating tradeoffs, driving alignment, and delivering measurable risk reduction.
• Deep expertise in the security of cloud platforms (e.g., Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure), especially securing multi-cloud networks and infrastructure, and designing cloud-agnostic systems.
• Experience securing on-prem deployments and datacenters from construction to multi-tenant use.
• Familiarity with container security, orchestration security, and authentication/authorization.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with an ability to think critically and objectively assess security risks.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to convey complex security concepts to executive, technical, and non-technical stakeholders.
• Excitement about collaborating with cross-functional teams to build secure, reliable systems that scale globally.

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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At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.

Compensation Range: $277.6K - $490K