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Software Engineer - Data Aquisition (systems)

OpenAI· Research
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San Francisco$295k - $536kFull-timePosted 2mo ago

About the role

Software Engineer role focused on building and operating infrastructure for frontier research and critical research-facing systems. Work spans networking, bootstrapping, Kubernetes, scalability, automation, and reliability, with emphasis on reliability-heavy infrastructure and enabling researchers.

Responsibilities

  • Build and operate reliable infrastructure for research workloads and research-facing services.
  • Support and improve systems across data infrastructure, processing, crawl and ingest, caching, search, observability, and clusterwide services.
  • Improve cluster bootstrapping, provisioning, automation, and deployment workflows.
  • Debug issues across networking, compute, storage, orchestration, and service reliability layers.
  • Build software and automation that reduce manual operational work and improve system reliability.
  • Partner closely with researchers, infrastructure engineers, and service owners to understand system needs and translate them into durable solutions.
  • Help evolve existing infrastructure toward more scalable, maintainable, and standard patterns.
  • Take ownership of critical systems and drive work independently from problem definition through execution.

Qualifications

  • Strong systems fundamentals and understand how infrastructure scales in practice.
  • Comfortable with Linux, networking, Kubernetes, provisioning, and distributed systems operations.
  • Ability to write software to automate, debug, and improve infrastructure systems.
  • Strong execution mindset and ability to independently drive ambiguous infrastructure work.
  • Enjoy supporting a wide surface area of systems, from research tooling to platform services.
  • Pragmatic about when to build custom systems versus using existing, well-supported tools.
  • Care about building reliable systems that make researchers faster and reduce operational friction.

Skills

Required:LinuxNetworkingKubernetesAutomationDistributed systems

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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