Software Engineer, Enterprise Controls

Xapply; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 170,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

OpenAI is seeking an experienced backend software engineer to shape systems behind enterprise access, governance, and sharing. You will lead technical design, stay hands‑on through production, and collaborate across OpenAI products. This role is based in San Francisco.

You will design backend services for permissions, authorization, and governance and build scalable APIs for workspace administration as OpenAI products evolve. Strong backend expertise and architectural leadership are essential.

Qualifications

• 9+ years of backend software engineering experience.
• Proven track record shipping complex product or platform capabilities.
• Experience providing technical leadership for substantial initiatives.
• Strong proficiency in Python, Go, Rust, Java, or C++.
• Experience building authorization, permissions, or governance systems.

Responsibilities

• Design and build backend services for permissions, authorization, and governance across OpenAI APIs.
• Develop sharing capabilities between people and agents with clear access rules.
• Build reusable services and APIs to support workspace administration and console experiences.
• Lead architecture and delivery for complex initiatives with cross‑team coordination.
• Translate enterprise needs into clear configuration and reliable permission behavior.
• Own reliability, security, and performance through testing, observability, and production debugging.

Skills

Backend engineering

Distributed systems design

Technical leadership

API design

Security and reliability

Python

Go

Rust

Java

C++

Job description

Description: About the Team

Enterprise Controls & Console is part of Enterprise Engineering. We build the permissions, governance, and administration capabilities that help organizations use and deploy ChatGPT, Codex, and OpenAI products with confidence. We give administrators granular controls over access and security, helping ensure that people and agents operate within the boundaries their organizations define.

Our work combines complex backend platform engineering with enterprise product needs and touches every major product and model launch. We build scalable, reusable services and intuitive administration experiences, and provide a shared controls foundation that enables internal teams to introduce new capabilities safely.

About the Role

We are looking for an experienced backend software engineer to help shape and build the systems behind enterprise access, governance, and sharing. You will bring deep backend expertise and strong product judgment to problems that span multiple OpenAI products, including how people and agents share access and work together. You will lead technical design and delivery, translate ambiguous enterprise needs into clear system behavior, and remain hands‑on from implementation through production operation. This role is based in SanFrancisco.

In this role, you will:

• Design and build backend services for permissions, authorization, and governance across ChatGPT, Codex, and OpenAI APIs.


• Develop sharing capabilities between people and agents, with clear access rules and enterprise controls that are understandable to administrators and users.


• Build reusable services and APIs that support workspace administration and console experiences as OpenAI products evolve.


• Lead architecture and delivery for complex initiatives, aligning product and engineering partners on requirements, tradeoffs, and rollout plans.


• Translate enterprise needs into clear configuration, predictable permission behavior, and maintainable systems that other product teams can build on.


• Own the reliability, security, and performance of the services you ship through testing, observability, production debugging, and continuous improvement.

Your background might look something like:

• 9+ years of professional backend software engineering experience, excluding internships, building and operating production services.


• Deep backend engineering expertise and a track record of shipping complex product or platform capabilities that customers depend on.


• Experience providing technical leadership for substantial initiatives, making architectural decisions, and coordinating delivery across teams while remaining hands‑on.


• Strong proficiency in a backend language such as Python, Go, Rust, Java, or C++, with sound software design and systems fundamentals.


• Experience designing distributed services, APIs, and data models, with an understanding of reliability, consistency, scalability, and performance tradeoffs.


• Experience building authorization, permissions, or enterprise governance systems, including translating access policies into reliable application behavior.


• Strong product judgment and communication skills, with the ability to turn ambiguous user and administrator needs into practical technical decisions.


• A track record of owning production systems, diagnosing difficult failures, and improving security, testing, observability, and operational reliability.

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 Affi… https://cdn.openai.com/policies/eeo-policy-statement.pdf.

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.

To notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non‑compliant, please submit a report through this form https://form.asana.com/?d=57018692298241&k=5MqR40fZd7jlxVUh5J-UeA. No response will be provided to inquiries unrelated to job posting compliance.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link https://form.asana.com/?k=bQ7w9h3iexRlicUdWRiwvg&d=57018692298241.

OpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy https://cdn.openai.com/policies/global-employee-and-contractor-privacy-policy.pdf

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.