Tech Lead, Model Serving Efficiency

OpenAI; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 130,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

An innovative company is seeking a Tech Lead / Staff-Level Engineer to enhance model serving efficiency. This pivotal role involves optimizing inference performance and scalability while mentoring junior engineers. You will collaborate closely with research and product teams to ensure models are effective at scale. If you have a passion for AI systems and enjoy guiding others, this role offers a unique opportunity to shape the future of technology in a supportive environment. Join a forward-thinking team dedicated to pushing the boundaries of AI for the benefit of humanity.

Benefits

Relocation Assistance

Flexible Work Hours

Health Insurance

Retirement Plan

Professional Development

Remote Work Options

Qualifications

• Deep expertise in model performance optimization, particularly at the inference layer.
• Strong background in kernel-level systems and data movement.

Responsibilities

• Lead engineering efforts focused on improving model serving and system efficiency.
• Provide technical mentorship and oversight for a junior engineering team.

Skills

Model Performance Optimization

Kernel-Level Systems

Data Movement

Low-Level Performance Tuning

Mentorship

Education

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related field

Master's Degree in a relevant field

Tools

AI Systems

Model Serving Infrastructure

Job description

About the Team

The Sora team is pioneering multimodal capabilities for OpenAI’s foundation models. We’re a hybrid research and product team focused on integrating multimodal functionalities into our AI products, ensuring they are reliable, user-friendly, and aligned with our mission of broad societal benefit.

About the Role

We’re looking for a Tech Lead / Staff-Level Engineer to drive improvements in model serving efficiency for Sora. This is a high-impact role where you’ll lead initiatives to optimize inference performance and scalability. You’ll also be engaged in model design, to ensure that trained models will best meet the deployment requirements. You’ll work closely with leadership and the broader team, supporting and mentoring a growing group of junior engineers, while helping to shape the future of our model inference stack.

This role is critical to scaling the team’s broader goals - it will directly enable leadership to focus on higher-leverage initiatives by building a stronger technical foundation.

In this role you will:

• Lead engineering efforts focused on improving model serving, inference performance, and system efficiency

• Provide technical mentorship and oversight for a junior engineering team

• Drive optimizations from a kernel and data movement perspective to improve system throughput and reliability

• Partner closely with research and product teams to ensure our models perform effectively at scale

• Design, build, and improve critical serving infrastructure to support Sora’s growth and reliability needs

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Have deep expertise in model performance optimization, particularly at the inference layer

• Have a strong background in kernel-level systems, data movement, and low-level performance tuning

• Enjoy mentoring and guiding junior engineers without needing formal management responsibilities

• Are excited about scaling high-performing AI systems that serve real-world, multimodal workloads

• Can navigate ambiguity, set technical direction, and drive complex initiatives to completion
  

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

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 do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability or any other legally protected status.

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For US Based Candidates: Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

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.