Software Engineer - Privacy & Compliance

OpenAI; Los Angeles (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading AI research company in California is seeking a Software Engineer to architect and build backend systems that enforce data privacy and automate compliance. In this impactful role, you will work closely with infrastructure, security, and legal teams. The ideal candidate will have 5+ years of experience, strong engineering fundamentals, and a passion for protecting user data while enabling innovation. Competitive compensation offered.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of industry experience building backend systems.
• Experience with RBAC/ACL systems and encryption-based access is a plus.
• Background in security or privacy engineering is advantageous.

Responsibilities

• Design and operate backend services enforcing privacy protections.
• Develop authorization mechanisms integrated into data services.
• Collaborate with security and legal teams on privacy requirements.

Skills

Strong software engineering fundamentals

Fluency in programming languages (Python, Go, etc.)

Experience with distributed authorization systems

Familiarity with global privacy regulations

Ability to collaborate with legal and product teams

Tools

Cloud platforms (Azure, AWS, GCP)

Data platforms or ML infrastructure

Job description

Software Engineer - Privacy & Compliance

Applied AI Engineering - San Francisco and Seattle

We’re looking for a Software Engineer to architect and build backend systems that enforce data privacy and automate compliance at scale. You’ll work closely with product, infrastructure, security, and legal teams to embed privacy-by-design into our data and access layers.

This is a hands-on, high-impact role for an experienced engineer who is passionate about protecting user data while enabling innovation.

What You’ll Do

• Design, build, and operate backend services that enforce policy-driven data access, lifecycle controls, and privacy protections.
• Develop distributed authorization and identity-aware enforcement mechanisms integrated directly into data services and control planes.
• Implement auditability, policy hooks, and enforcement observability to ensure compliance is continuously verifiable.
• Partner with Security, Legal, and Compliance to convert privacy requirements into scalable technical designs and developer-friendly APIs.
• Harden data platforms and backend services through schema-level controls and data handling constraints by default.
• Collaborate with infrastructure teams to ensure consistent enforcement across systems while minimizing duplicated implementations.
• Contribute patterns, libraries, and education that elevate trustworthy data access patterns across the organization.

You Might Thrive in This Role If You Have

• 5+ years of industry experience building and operating backend or infrastructure systems in production.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals, with fluency in at least one major programming language (e.g., Python, Go, Rust, C++, Java).
• Experience with distributed authorization, RBAC/ACL systems, encryption-based access, or policy engines.
• Familiarity with global privacy regulations and their architectural implications.
• Ability to influence and collaborate with teams across legal, compliance, product, and engineering.
• A bias toward practical, impactful solutions that balance privacy protections with product needs.

Nice to Have

• Experience with cloud platforms (e.g., Azure, AWS, GCP) and large-scale data systems.
• Background in security engineering, privacy engineering, or data governance.
• Experience with control-plane or metadata-driven enforcement systems.
• Exposure to data platforms or ML infrastructure.
• Prior experience in a regulated or highly sensitive data environment.

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.

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 link .

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.