Software Engineer, Infrastructure Security

algojobs; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading AI technology firm in San Francisco is seeking a Security Software Engineer to join their Infrastructure Security team. This role requires strong software engineering skills, expertise in security infrastructure, and a deep understanding of security principles. You will architect production-grade security services and partner with engineers to enhance security in high-performance compute clusters. This position offers a chance to work on critical security initiatives for large-scale AI deployments.

Qualifications

• Strong software engineering skills required with a track record in distributed services.
• Experience with critical security infrastructure is essential.
• Deep understanding of security principles and best practices is a must.
• Expertise in securing cloud platforms required.

Responsibilities

• Architect and implement production-grade security services.
• Partner with engineers to embed security in compute clusters.
• Develop automation and detection tooling.
• Drive high-impact initiatives in security.

Skills

Strong software engineering skills in Python, Go, Rust, or C/C++

Experience building or operating security infrastructure

Understanding of security principles and common vulnerabilities

Expertise in securing large-scale cloud platforms

Familiarity with container orchestration security

Proactive mindset for identifying security gaps

Strong analytical and problem-solving skills

Excellent communication skills

Job description

About the Team

Security is at the foundation of OpenAI’s mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.

The Security team protects OpenAI’s technology, people, and products. We are technical in what we build but operational in how we execute, and we support every product and research effort at OpenAI. Our tenets include prioritizing for impact, enabling researchers and developers, preparing for future transformative technologies, and fostering a strong, collaborative security culture.

About the Role

OpenAI is seeking a Security Software Engineer to join the Infrastructure Security (InfraSec) team.

InfraSec safeguards the core of OpenAI’s research and production environments—GPU supercomputing clusters, multi-cloud infrastructure, datacenters, networking, storage, and the critical services that power our frontier AI models. Our charter spans everything from bare-metal hardware and firmware to Kubernetes clusters, service meshes, and the data pathways that carry highly sensitive model weights and user data.

As a Security Software Engineer, you will design and build critical foundational services, such as authentication systems, egress/ingress proxies, access brokers, and key management platforms, that demand high standards of reliability, scalability, and software craftsmanship. These systems form the security backbone of OpenAI’s supercomputing environment and must remain robust under intense scale and adversarial pressure.

In this role, you will:

• Architect and implement production-grade security services (e.g., auth services, access brokers, secure proxies, key-management infrastructure) that provide strong guarantees across hardware, operating systems, Kubernetes, networks, and CI/CD.
• Partner with infrastructure and research engineers to embed security into high-performance compute clusters, enabling rapid model training and deployment without compromising protection.
• Develop automation and detection tooling to continuously identify and mitigate risks in large-scale cloud and on-prem environments.
• Drive high-impact initiatives such as line-speed encryption, machine identity, and network isolation, continuously raising the security bar for emerging AI workloads.
• Lead or participate in design reviews and threat models to ensure new systems launch with strong security foundations and operational excellence.

You will thrive in this role if you have:

• Strong software engineering skills in languages such as Python, Go, Rust, or C/C++, with a track record of shipping and operating high-reliability distributed services.
• Experience building or operating critical security infrastructure (e.g., auth services, service-to-service proxies, certificate or key-management systems).
• Deep understanding of security principles, best practices, and common vulnerabilities.
• Expertise in securing large-scale cloud platforms (e.g., Azure, AWS, GCP), including multi-cloud networks and cloud-agnostic system design.
• Familiarity with container and orchestration security (Kubernetes, service meshes) and modern authentication/authorization standards (OIDC, mTLS, SPIFFE/SPIRE).
• A proactive mindset, with the ability to identify and address security gaps or inefficiencies through automation and tooling.
• A track record of delivering scalable solutions and driving impactful changes across infrastructure in real-world projects.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with an ability to think critically and objectively assess security risks.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to convey complex security concepts to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Excitement about collaborating with cross-functional teams to build secure, reliable systems that scale globally.

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 Affrinative 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.

To notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant, please submit a report through this form. 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.

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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.