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Software Engineer, Database Systems

OpenAI· Applied AI
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San Francisco, Mountain View$266k - $445k + equityFull-timePosted 11mo ago

About the role

Engineer on OpenAI's Database Systems team, building and optimizing high-performance distributed database infrastructure (core engine in C++), contributing to ingestion, query execution, indexing, storage, and system reliability at scale.

Responsibilities

  • Design, build, and operate high-performance distributed systems
  • Identify and resolve performance bottlenecks to scale infrastructure to the next order of magnitude
  • Define long-term technical direction and guide system evolution
  • Collaborate with product, engineering, and research teams to deliver scalable and reliable infrastructure
  • Dig deep into complex production issues across the stack
  • Contribute to incident response, postmortems, and best practices for system reliability

Qualifications

  • 4+ years of relevant industry experience, with 2+ years leading large scale, complex projects or teams as an engineer or tech lead
  • Experience with distributed systems at scale, with a strong focus on performance, reliability, and scalability
  • Strong communication skills and ability to collaborate across highly technical and cross-functional teams
  • Proficiency in a systems programming language such as C++ (our core engine is written in C++) is strongly preferred
  • Fluency in cloud environments (AWS, GCP, Azure) and IaC tools (Terraform or similar)
  • Experience with Linux systems, CI/CD pipelines, and modern observability stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, etc.)
  • Domain knowledge in areas such as databases, data systems, storage engines, indexing, and query processing is a plus but not required

Skills

Required:Distributed systemsC++Cloud platformsLinux
Nice to have:Observability tools

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
  • Mental health and wellness support
  • Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage
  • Annual learning and development stipend
  • Daily meals in offices, and meal delivery credits as eligible
  • Relocation support for eligible employees
  • Additional taxable fringe benefits, such as charitable donation matching and wellness stipends
Last updated Sep 3, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About OpenAI

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Company profileWebsite

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