Research Engineer, Privacy

The Consensus; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Relocation assistance

Job summary

OpenAI is seeking a Privacy Engineer in San Francisco to safeguard user data while enabling scalable AI. You will design privacy‑preserving ML methods, implement differential privacy, secure aggregation, and federated learning, and work with researchers to translate theory into production.

Relocation assistance is available. You will collaborate across teams to set standards and respond to evolving privacy regulations, helping OpenAI advance safe and responsible AI.

Qualifications

• Hands-on research or production experience with PETs.
• Fluent in modern deep‑learning stacks (PyTorch/JAX) and turning papers into tested code.
• Experience stress‑testing models for private data leakage and explaining attack vectors.
• Track record of publishing or implementing privacy or security work.
• Thrives in fast‑moving cross‑disciplinary environments balancing research and production.

Responsibilities

• Design and prototype privacy‑preserving ML algorithms deployable at OpenAI scale.
• Measure and strengthen model robustness against privacy attacks while balancing utility and guarantees.
• Develop internal libraries, evaluation suites, and documentation for privacy techniques.
• Lead investigations into privacy/performance trade‑offs of large models; publish insights.
• Define privacy standards, threat models, and audit procedures across the ML lifecycle.
• Collaborate with Security, Policy, Product, and Legal to translate regulatory requirements into safeguards.

Skills

PETs

PyTorch/JAX

Differential privacy

Security audits

Model inversion defense

Tools

Secure aggregation

Federated learning

Job description

About the Team

The Privacy Engineering Team at OpenAI is committed to integrating privacy as a foundational element in OpenAI's mission of advancing Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Our focus is on all OpenAI products and systems handling user data, striving to uphold the highest standards of data privacy and security.

We build essential production services, develop novel privacy‑preserving techniques, and equip cross‑functional engineering and research partners with the necessary tools to ensure responsible data use. Our approach to prioritizing responsible data use is integral to OpenAI's mission of safely introducing AGI that offers widespread benefits.

About the Role

As a part of the Privacy Engineering Team, you will work on the frontlines of safeguarding user data while ensuring the usability and efficiency of our AI systems. You will help us understand and implement the latest research in privacy‑enhancing technologies such as differential privacy, federated learning, and data memorization. Moreover, you will focus on investigating the interaction between privacy and machine learning, developing innovative techniques to improve data anonymization, and preventing model inversion and membership inference attacks.

This position is located in San Francisco. Relocation assistance is available.

In this role, you will:

• Design and prototype privacy‑preserving machine‑learning algorithms (e.g., differential privacy, secure aggregation, federated learning) that can be deployed at OpenAI scale.
• Measure and strengthen model robustness against privacy attacks such as membership inference, model inversion, and data memorization leaks—balancing utility with provable guarantees.
• Develop internal libraries, evaluation suites, and documentation that make cutting‑edge privacy techniques accessible to engineering and research teams.
• Lead deep‑dive investigations into the privacy–performance trade‑offs of large models, publishing insights that inform model‑training and product‑safety decisions.
• Define and codify privacy standards, threat models, and audit procedures that guide the entire ML lifecycle—from dataset curation to post‑deployment monitoring.
• Collaborate across Security, Policy, Product, and Legal to translate evolving regulatory requirements into practical technical safeguards and tooling.

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Have hands‑on research or production experience with PETs.
• Are fluent in modern deep‑learning stacks (PyTorch/JAX) and comfortable turning cutting‑edge papers into reliable, well‑tested code.
• Enjoy stress‑testing models—probing them for private data leakage—and can explain complex attack vectors to non‑experts with clarity.
• Have a track record of publishing (or implementing) novel privacy or security work and relish bridging the gap between academia and real‑world systems.
• Thrive in fast‑moving, cross‑disciplinary environments where you alternate between open‑ended research and shipping production features under tight deadlines.
• Communicate crisply, document rigorously, and care deeply about building AI systems that respect user privacy while pushing the frontiers of capability.

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.

OpenAI’s Affir... 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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