Software Engineer, IP Infrastructure

OpenAI; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

OpenAI, Inc. is seeking a software engineer to build and improve the backend services behind our workflows, primarily in Python, taking projects from design through production to improve reliability as partner integrations evolve.

Based in San Francisco with a hybrid schedule (3 days in the office per week), you will translate requirements into testable business logic, debug across system boundaries, and collaborate with researchers, security teams, and partner engineers to resolve integration

Qualifications

• Strong Python skills and backend software experience.
• Experience taking a service or automation project from implementation into production.
• Ability to trace problems across services and dependencies.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain automated pipelines transferring artifacts between environments.
• Implement validation and business logic for artifact preparation and sharing.
• Improve production reliability through testing, monitoring, and diagnostics.
• Integrate services with source control, object storage, and build/container tooling.
• Collaborate with researchers, security, and external engineers to resolve integration issues.
• Improve workflows and leverage AI tools to enhance system effectiveness.

Skills

Python

Backend development

Testing

Debugging

Communication

Tools

Docker

Bazel

Buildkite

CI/CD

Job description

About the Team

The IP Infrastructure team builds and operates the systems that enable OpenAI to share research and engineering technology securely and reliably with strategic partners. Our work spans continuously running pipelines for model weights, configurations, code, and container images.

We work closely with research, security, developer infrastructure, and partner engineering teams to turn complex requirements into dependable software. We’re a small, collaborative team with direct ownership of systems that support important partnerships.

About the Role

We’re looking for a software engineer to build and improve the backend services behind these workflows. You’ll work primarily in Python, take projects from design through production, and make our systems more reliable and easier to operate as partner integrations evolve.

The work combines hands-on engineering with careful judgment. You’ll translate requirements about what can be shared into clear, testable business logic, debug problems across system boundaries, and collaborate with the teams that build and use the underlying infrastructure.

This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week.

In this role, you will:

• Build and maintain automated pipelines that transfer model weights, configurations, code, and container images between OpenAI and partner environments

• Implement the validation and business logic that determines how artifacts are prepared and shared

• Improve production reliability through testing, monitoring, useful diagnostics, and robust failure handling

• Integrate services with source control, object storage, and build and container tooling, working closely with the owners of shared infrastructure

• Partner with researchers, security teams, and external engineers to understand requirements and resolve integration problems

• Improve existing workflows and use AI tools where they can make the systems we build more effective

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Have strong Python skills and experience building, testing, and debugging backend software

• Have taken a service, pipeline, or automation project from implementation into production and helped keep it reliable

• Enjoy investigating how systems fit together and tracing problems across services and dependencies

• Can turn ambiguous requirements into practical software while exercising sound judgment around sensitive information

• Communicate clearly with technical and nontechnical collaborators and enjoy working with partner engineering teams

• Learn unfamiliar systems quickly and take responsibility for following problems through to resolution

• Experience with cloud services, object storage, containers, or CI/CD is helpful. Our work involves tools such as Docker, Bazel, and Buildkite, but prior expertise in every tool or a particular cloud provider is not required.

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...

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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