Software Engineer, Cyber Safeguards

OpenAI; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 250,000 - 350,000; Full time

Job summary

OpenAI is seeking a very senior, independent Software Engineer to lead the technical work behind cyber safeguard infrastructure in Preparedness. You’ll bring production-grade engineering discipline to systems that support cyber evaluations and safeguard research, while collaborating with researchers and security partners.

The right candidate can move from ambiguous research needs to robust, operable platforms, drive cross‑organizational work, and mentor teammates while staying hands‑on.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience owning large-scale production systems.
• Strong hands-on software engineering and system design skills.
• Experience collaborating with researchers and security partners.

Responsibilities

• Drive the technical direction and hands‑on execution for cyber safeguard infrastructure.
• Establish production‑quality reliability, observability, on‑call, and SLA/SLO practices.
• Partner with security, research, policy and product teams to translate needs into durable platforms.
• Lead cross‑functional technical work, create alignment and unblock collaborators.
• Build reliable systems that support cyber evaluations and research workflows.
• Improve scalability, usability, and operational safety of safeguards.
• Mentor teammates while remaining deeply hands‑on.

Skills

Production systems

Systems design

Cybersecurity

Cross-functional leadership

On-call / incident response

Mentoring engineers

Job description

About the Team

Models are becoming increasingly capable - moving from tools that assist humans to agents that can plan, execute, and adapt in the real world. Mitigating the frontier risks resulting from these capabilities is paramount to OpenAI's ability to continue deploying models safely.

The Preparedness team is dedicated to addressing these critical risks. Our work includes:

1. Measurement. Monitoring and predicting the evolving capabilities of frontier AI systems.

2. Mitigation. Keeping misalignment safeguards, alignment tools, and on track to adequately address extreme threats that might arise in the future.

3. Coordination. Setting mitigation targets by maintaining OpenAI's preparedness framework, and partnering with other staff to achieve these targets.

This is urgent, fast‑paced work that has far-reaching implications for the company and for society.

About the Role

We’re looking for a very senior, independent Software Engineer to lead the technical work behind cyber safeguard infrastructure in Preparedness. You’ll bring production-grade engineering discipline to systems that support everything from cyber evaluations and safeguard research internally to enabling the safe deployment of capabilities externally, while working closely with researchers and security partners. The right person can move comfortably from ambiguous research needs to robust, operable systems—and can drive the work across organizational boundaries with clear communication.

In this role, you’ll:

• Drive the technical direction and hands‑on execution for cyber safeguard infrastructure.

• Establish production‑quality reliability, observability, on‑call, and SLA/SLO practices.

• Partner with teams across the company - security, research, policy and product - to translate evolving needs into durable platforms.

• Lead cross‑functional technical work, create alignment, and unblock collaborators.

• Build reliable systems that support cyber evaluations and research workflows.

• Improve the scalability, usability, and operational safety of cyber safeguards.

• Mentor teammates and raise the engineering bar while remaining deeply hands‑on.

You might thrive in this role if you have:

• Extensive experience owning large-scale production systems, including reliability, on‑call, incident response, SLAs/SLOs, and operational excellence.

• Senior/staff‑level technical leadership with a track record of driving ambiguous, cross‑functional work, especially in cybersecurity.

• Strong hands‑on software engineering and systems‑design skills; you can go deep in the code and architecture, including systems where you are unfamiliar and quickly gain context to make meaningful changes while following existing patterns.

• Ability to collaborate closely with researchers and independently turn evolving research needs into robust infrastructure.

• Experience thinking and communicating about cyber capability, misuse risk, access patterns, safeguards, and deployment tradeoffs in high‑stakes environments.

• Experience at a security company, supporting cyber evaluations, or building security/reliability infrastructure is a plus.

• Experience moving from strong engineering into research support is a plus; former engineering managers are welcome if they remain deeply technical and hands‑on.

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 Affiant Action 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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