Software Engineer, Caching Infrastructure

OpenAI; United States; Remote; USD 255,000 - 405,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

Mental health support

401(k) plan with 50% matching

Generous time off and company holidays

Paid parental leave

Learning & development stipend

Job summary

OpenAI is seeking an experienced engineer to design and scale our multi-tenant caching infrastructure. You will help shape the caching platform that powers inference, identity, and product experiences, balancing performance, durability, and cost across a fast-paced environment.

The role requires deep expertise in Redis/Memcached, Kubernetes, and service meshes, with a focus on latency, reliability, and scale.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience building and scaling distributed systems with a focus on caching, load balancing, or storage systems.
• Deep expertise with Redis, Memcached, or similar solutions including clustering, durability configurations, client-side connection patterns, and performance tuning.
• Production experience with Kubernetes, service meshes (Envoy), and autoscaling systems.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate OpenAI’s multi-tenant caching platform used across inference, identity, quota, and product experiences.
• Define the long-term vision and roadmap for caching as a core infra capability, balancing performance, durability, and cost.
• Collaborate with other infra teams and product teams to ensure our caching platform meets their needs.

Skills

Distributed systems

Caching

Load balancing

Storage systems

Kubernetes

Redis/Memcached

Tools

Redis

Memcached

Kubernetes

Envoy

Job description

About the Team

At OpenAI, we’re building safe and beneficial artificial general intelligence. We deploy our models through ChatGPT, our APIs, and other cutting-edge products. Behind the scenes, making these systems fast, reliable, and cost-efficient requires world-class infrastructure.

The Caching Infrastructure team is responsible for building a caching layer that powers many critical use cases at OpenAI. We aim to provide a high-availability, multi-tenant cache platform that scales automatically with workload, minimizes tail latency, and supports a diverse range of use cases.

We’re looking for an experienced engineer to help design and scale this critical infrastructure. The ideal candidate has deep experience in distributed caching systems (e.g., Redis, Memcached), networking fundamentals, and Kubernetes-based service orchestration.

In This Role, You Will:

• Design, build, and operate OpenAI’s multi-tenant caching platform used across inference, identity, quota, and product experiences.

• Define the long-term vision and roadmap for caching as a core infra capability, balancing performance, durability, and cost.

• Collaborate with other infra teams (e.g., networking, observability, databases) and product teams to ensure our caching platform meets their needs.

You Might Thrive In This Role If You:

• Have 5+ years of experience building and scaling distributed systems, with a strong focus on caching, load balancing, or storage systems.

• Have deep expertise with Redis, Memcached, or similar solutions, including clustering, durability configurations, client-side connection patterns, and performance tuning.

• Have production experience with Kubernetes, service meshes (e.g., Envoy), and autoscaling systems.

• Think rigorously about latency, reliability, throughput, and cost in designing platform capabilities.

• Thrive in a fast-paced environment and enjoy balancing pragmatic engineering with long-term technical excellence.

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 Aff….

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with applicable law, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act. 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

$255K – $405K Offers Equity

The base pay offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factors, including market location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience.

In addition to the salary range listed above, total compensation also includes generous equity and benefits.

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance for you and your family

• Mental health and wellness support

• 401(k) plan with 50% matching

• Generous time off, many company holidays, and multiple coordinated company office closures throughout the year for focus and recharge.

• Paid parental leave (24 weeks paid birth-parent leave & 20-week paid parental leave) and family-planning support

• Annual learning & development stipend ($1,500 per year)