Software Engineer, Plugin Ecosystem

OpenAI; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 185,000 - 490,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Relocation support

Medical insurance

Paid parental leave

401(k)

Job summary

OpenAI in San Francisco is seeking a Software Engineer for the Plugin Ecosystem to build the systems behind plugins and improve how models use them. You will own APIs, SDKs, and services that developers leverage to extend ChatGPT and Codex, while collaborating across teams to drive plugin usage and reliability.

The role is hybrid, based in San Francisco with three in-office days per week, and relocation assistance is available for new employees.

Qualifications

• Experience designing and shipping robust APIs and services for external developers.
• Comfort with distributed systems and scaling backend components.
• Ability to balance product and engineering tradeoffs in plugin ecosystems.

Responsibilities

• Design and ship APIs, SDKs, and services that developers use to extend ChatGPT and Codex.
• Build intuitive experiences for discovering, installing, and using plugins.
• Improve plugin reliability and integration across models and products.
• Collaborate across Engineering, Product, Research, Security, and Trust & Safety to scale plugin infrastructure.

Skills

API design

Distributed systems

Backend engineering

OpenAI plugins

Tools

Python

Go

Kubernetes

Job description

Software Engineer, Plugin Ecosystem | OpenAI

Careers

Software Engineer, Plugin Ecosystem

Applied AI Engineering - San Francisco

About the Team

The Plugin Ecosystem team builds the platform and product experiences that let people extend ChatGPT and Codex. We work on plugins, skills, connectors, interactive apps, and open standards like the Model Context Protocol (MCP). We make plugins easy to discover, install, and use, ensure they’re invoked at the right time, and help people find new ways to get value from them.

We want anyone to be able to turn a useful workflow into a plugin, share it, and have other people use it. A plugin can package instructions and skills with connections to the tools and data it needs. Our work spans creation and publishing, reliable execution across our products, clear permissions and approvals, and the controls admins need to bring plugins to their organizations. We work closely with research to improve plugin quality as models evolve.

About the Role

We’re looking for product-minded engineers to build the systems behind plugins and improve how models use them. Depending on your focus, you may scale generalist infrastructure and identity-related integrations across products, or improve plugin quality at the intersection of backend engineering and applied AI or work on the product experience itself to drive plugin usage. You’ll work across teams and own problems from diagnosis and design through implementation and release.

This role is based in San Francisco. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.

In this role, you will:

• Design and ship APIs, SDKs, and services that developers use to extend ChatGPT and Codex.
• Build intuitive experiences that help users discover, install, and use plugins to get more done.
• Make plugins easier to create, test, publish, update, and share.
• Improve when and how models use plugins, from choosing the right plugin to completing a task. Work with Research to diagnose failures and measure improvements as models evolve.
• Improve plugin reliability and interaction quality across ChatGPT and Codex, including interactive apps, with clear error messages and recovery paths.
• Build consistent permissions, approvals, and admin controls that help individuals and organizations confidently adopt plugins.
• Work with developers and partners to turn recurring problems into improvements to the platform, tooling, and documentation.
• Collaborate across engineering, Product, Research, Security, and Trust & Safety to scale plugin infrastructure and deliver safe, reliable execution.

You might thrive int his role if you:

• Care about product quality and can make complex capabilities feel intuitive, from discovering a useful plugin to completing a task with it.
• Have strong opinions about APIs and abstractions, and can explain the tradeoffs behind your decisions. Experience with identity, permissions, or integration-heavy systems is especially valuable.
• Enjoy talking with users and developers, understanding what they’re trying to accomplish, and turning recurring problems into product and platform improvements.
• Can move between product questions and technical details, collaborate across teams, and take an ambiguous problem through to production.
• Are comfortable working across web interfaces and backend systems. Experience building applied AI systems, diagnosing model–tool interactions, and measuring reliability and quality is especially valuable.
• Have built products people rely on or software that other developers use, such as an API or SDK, an open-source project, a developer platform, or internal tools with real users.

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 Afffirmative 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 .

OpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy

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

$185K – $490K + Offers Equity

The base pay offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factors, including market location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. If the role is non-exempt, overtime pay will be provided consistent with applicable laws. In addition to the salary range listed above, total compensation also includes generous equity, performance-related bonus(es) for eligible employees, and the following benefits.

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance for you and your family, with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts
• Pre-tax accounts for Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and commuter expenses (parking and transit)
• 401(k) retirement plan with employer match
• Paid parental leave (up to 24 weeks for birth parents and 20 weeks for non-birthing parents), plus paid medical and caregiver leave (up to 8 weeks)
• Paid time off: flexible PTO for exempt employees and up to 15 days annually for non-exempt employees
• 13+ paid company holidays, and multiple paid coordinated company office closures throughout the year for focus and recharge, plus paid sick or safe time (1 hour per 30 hours worked, or more, as required by applicable state or local law)
• Mental health and wellness support
• Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage
• Annual learning and development stipend to fuel your professional growth
• Daily meals in our offices, and meal delivery credits as eligible
• Relocation support for eligible employees
• Additional taxable fringe benefits, such as charitable donation matching and wellness stipends, may also be provided.

More details about our benefits are available to candidates during the hiring process.

This role is at-will and OpenAI reserves the right to modify base pay and other compensation components at any time based on individual performance, team or company results, or market conditions.