Software Engineer, API Multicloud

OpenAI; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 293,000 - 385,000; Full time

Job summary

OpenAI in San Francisco is seeking an experienced backend engineer to build and enhance cloud-native solutions for OpenAI's API platform. You will create backend services and systems that integrate AI capabilities into existing workflows while collaborating closely with cloud partners and internal teams.

The ideal candidate should have over 7 years of experience, proficient in backend languages like Python or Go, and demonstrate strong communication skills. This position offers a competitive salary range and an opportunity to work at the forefront of AI technology.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of professional engineering experience in relevant roles.
• Proficient in one or more backend languages and distributed systems concepts.
• Experience building developer tools, especially AI-powered tools.

Responsibilities

• Build backend infrastructure systems for OpenAI's API platform.
• Design cloud-contained products allowing customer use of OpenAI capabilities.
• Partner with cloud providers to translate capabilities into production-ready systems.

Skills

Backend programming languages (Python, Go, Rust, Typescript)

Distributed systems concepts

Developer tools experience

Cloud services experience

Technical communication

Job description

About the Team

OpenAI's API Multicloud team is responsible for extending OpenAI's API platform into strategic cloud environments, starting with AWS. The team's mission is to distribute OpenAI's API broadly and safely by enabling key API technologies in cloud-native environments, in close partnership with Amazon and internal teams across Codex, Research, Safety Systems, and Applied.

The team is focused on bringing core developer and enterprise capabilities into cloud-native environments, including cloud-hosted Codex, model customization / post-training as a service, and new stateful runtime environments for agentic workloads. This work sits at the intersection of production ML systems, developer platforms, model behavior, and large-scale infrastructure.

About the Role

We're looking for a backend engineer who can quickly understand OpenAI's models, products, and systems, then adapt first‑party deployments for other cloud platforms. You'll build backend services, APIs, SDK integrations, authentication flows, and cloud service infrastructure that let developers use OpenAI capabilities in the cloud environments where they already build. This role involves working across teams, sometimes embedded with partner product groups, to ship products quickly and across multiple platforms at the same time. It's a strong fit for engineers who have built developer tools, especially AI‑powered tools, communicate clearly across technical boundaries, and can shape architectures that support different deployment models; experience building cloud services is a strong plus.

In this role, you will:

• Build backend and infrastructure systems that extend OpenAI's API platform into cloud‑native environments, like AWS.
• Design and ship cloud‑contained products that allow customers to use OpenAI capabilities while keeping workloads and data within cloud environments.
• Help stand up cloud‑hosted Codex experiences powered by the OpenAI Responses API.
• Build the infrastructure and runtime abstractions for a stateful, cloud‑optimized agentic platform.
• Partner closely with external cloud partners as well as internal teams across Codex, Research, and Safety Systems to translate emerging capabilities into production‑ready systems.
• Improve the reliability, scalability, observability, and operational maturity of the services underpinning these products.
• Help shape the technical direction of a new and growing team as it scales from an early core group into a larger engineering organization.

Your background might look something like:

• 7+ years of professional engineering experience (excluding internships) in relevant roles at tech and product‑driven companies.
• Proficient in one or more backend languages (e.g., Python, Go, Rust, Typescript or similar) and distributed systems concepts.
• Experience building developer tools, especially AI‑powered tools, excellent technical communication, and the ability to shape architectures that support different deployment models. Experience building cloud services is a strong plus.
• Experience turning ambiguous, fast‑moving technical problems into pragmatic, durable systems.
• Experience working with cloud infrastructure primitives and production service ownership.
• Experience collaborating cross‑functionally with platform, research, safety, or external partner teams is a plus.
• Interest in AI infrastructure, agentic systems, and developer platforms.
• Interest in AI/ML (direct experience not required)
• Proven ability to thrive in fast‑growing, product‑driven companies by effectively navigating loosely defined tasks and managing competing priorities or deadlines.

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 U.S.‑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.

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

OpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy

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: $293K - $385K