Software Engineer - Data Aquisition (systems)

OpenAI; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 255,000 - 405,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Job summary

OpenAI is seeking a Software Engineer on the Data Acquisition (systems) team in San Francisco to build and operate the infrastructure that supports frontier research and critical research-facing systems. You will work on systems close to the metal, addressing networking, bootstrapping, Kubernetes, scalability, automation, and reliability while writing software to improve these systems over time.

This role suits an independent, high-ownership engineer who enjoys reliability-focused infrastructure

Qualifications

• Strong systems fundamentals and understand how infrastructure scales in practice.
• Experience with Linux, networking, Kubernetes, provisioning, and distributed systems operations.
• Ability to write software to automate, debug, and improve infrastructure systems.
• Strong execution mindset to independently drive ambiguous infrastructure work.

Responsibilities

• Build and operate the infrastructure supporting frontier research and critical research-facing systems.
• Work on systems close to the metal, focusing on reliability and scalability.
• Collaborate across infrastructure, systems administration, cluster operations, and automation.

Skills

Linux

Kubernetes

Networking

Provisioning

Automation

Distributed systems

Tools

Git

CI/CD

Infrastructure-as-code

Job description

Software Engineer - Data Aquisition (systems) | OpenAI

Software Engineer - Data Aquisition (systems)

Foundations - San Francisco

About the Team

This team builds and operates the systems that enable OpenAI researchers to run reliable, scalable, and efficient research workflows. The team sits close to research and works across infrastructure, systems, and automation to make sure researchers have the tools and environments they need to move quickly.

The work spans software engineering, infrastructure, systems administration, cluster operations, and reliability engineering. As OpenAI’s infrastructure evolves from bespoke bare-metal systems toward more standard, scalable platforms, the team needs engineers who can understand how systems work end-to-end and build the right abstractions without reinventing the wheel.

About the Role

As a Software Engineer on this team, you will build and operate the infrastructure that supports frontier research and critical research-facing systems. You will work on systems that sit close to the metal, but the role is not limited to classic operations or sysadmin work. We are looking for someone who can reason about networking, bootstrapping, Kubernetes, scalability, automation, and reliability - while also writing software to make these systems better over time.

This role is a strong fit for an independent, high-ownership engineer who enjoys reliability-heavy infrastructure work but still wants to build. You do not need to come in as a kernel expert or highly algorithmic optimization engineer, but you should be deeply curious about infrastructure, comfortable debugging complex systems, and excited to support researchers doing novel work.

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Have strong systems fundamentals and understand how infrastructure scales in practice.

• Are comfortable with Linux, networking, Kubernetes, provisioning, and distributed systems operations.

• Can write software to automate, debug, and improve infrastructure systems.

• Have a strong execution mindset and can independently drive ambiguous infrastructure work.

• Enjoy supporting a wide surface area of systems, from research tooling to platform services.

• Are pragmatic about when to build custom systems versus using existing, well-supported tools.

• Care about building reliable systems that make researchers faster and reduce operational friction.

Nice to have:

• Experience with PXE boot, cluster provisioning, bare-metal infrastructure, or large-scale fleet management.

• Experience operating Kubernetes or similar orchestration systems at scale.

• Experience with infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD, observability, or deployment automation.

• Experience supporting search infrastructure, data platforms, ingest systems, or large-scale research workflows.

• Experience with Git-based workflows and internal developer tooling.

• Prior experience in environments where reliability, scale, and speed all matter.

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 policy.

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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

$255K – $405K + Offers Equity