Software Engineer, Productivity - Model Performance

OpenAI; Los Angeles (CA); On-site; USD 230,000 - 385,000; Full time

Job summary

OpenAI is seeking a Software Engineer, Productivity - Model Performance, to improve development workflows and CI/CD systems. This role involves enhancing testing frameworks and building tools that boost engineering productivity. Candidates should have strong Python skills, experience with CI/CD and testing infrastructure, and a collaborative attitude. Located in Los Angeles, the position offers a competitive salary between $230K and $385K, aligning with the company's commitment to enabling engineers to perform at their best.

Qualifications

• Motivated by enabling others and improving engineers' productivity.
• Strong experience with CI/CD, testing systems, and developer infrastructures.
• Collaborative, empathetic, and skilled in partnering with technical teams.
• Proficient in Python and experienced in building scalable developer tools.

Responsibilities

• Improve development workflows for engineers on model performance.
• Design and enhance CI/CD and testing pipelines.
• Build and maintain tools for reliability and iteration speed.
• Collaborate with engineers to reduce testing and deployment friction.

Skills

CI/CD

Developer infrastructure

Python

Testing systems

Collaboration

C++

Rust

PyTorch ecosystem

Job description

Software Engineer, Productivity - Model Performance

Runtime - San Francisco

About the Team

We’re hiring software engineers to make OpenAI’s Model Performance teams more productive. These teams work on the systems, tooling, and infrastructure that help improve model performance across OpenAI’s training and inference workloads at frontier scale.

About the Role

We’re looking for an autonomous, high-ownership developer productivity engineer who cares deeply about helping other engineers move faster, safer, and with more confidence.

This role will sit within OpenAI’s Model Performance organization, contributing to developer infrastructure, CI systems, testing workflows, tooling, and broader performance infrastructure efforts. There is also a strong opportunity to contribute to the Triton project and help improve the systems that support performance‑critical engineering work across OpenAI.

Responsibilities

• Improve development workflows for engineers working on model performance infrastructure
• Design and improve CI/CD, release, validation, and testing pipelines
• Build and maintain tools that improve reliability, iteration speed, and engineering confidence
• Partner closely with engineers to identify friction in testing, debugging, deployment, and development workflows
• Contribute to infrastructure efforts that support performance‑critical training and inference systems
• Help improve developer experience across Python‑heavy codebases and performance‑oriented infrastructure
• Work in a high‑context, ambiguous environment where ownership and good judgment matter

Qualifications

• You are motivated by enabling the people around you and helping engineers do their best work
• You have strong experience with CI/CD, developer infrastructure, testing systems, tooling, or build/release workflows
• You are highly collaborative, empathetic, and comfortable partnering deeply with technical teams
• You are strong in Python and enjoy building reliable, scalable developer tools and infrastructure
• You have experience improving large‑scale engineering workflows, especially around CI reliability, test infrastructure, and debugging velocity
• You are self‑directed and comfortable operating with ambiguity
• You do not need direct inference or model performance experience, but you are excited to learn the domain and make the team meaningfully more effective
• Experience in the PyTorch ecosystem is highly relevant
• Experience with C++ or Rust is a nice‑to‑have, but not required
• When you see repeated friction—slow tests, flaky CI, brittle release processes, painful debugging, unclear validation—you instinctively fix the underlying system
• You are pragmatic and know how to balance high standards with forward progress

Compensation

$230K – $385K

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.