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Software Engineer, API Multimodal

OpenAI· Core Product & Platform
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San Francisco$266k - $445k + equityFull-timePosted 2mo ago

About the role

Software engineer role focused on building and operating developer-facing APIs and distributed systems behind OpenAI’s image, audio, and real-time multimodal APIs. End-to-end ownership of projects from design to launch, with cross-functional collaboration with Research, Inference, and Safety.

Responsibilities

  • Design, build, and ship developer-facing APIs and backend services that serve frontier models.
  • Architect low-latency streaming, request, session, and model integration systems for reliable, scalable multimodal interactions.
  • Work with Research to bring new model capabilities into production and incorporate feedback from developers and customers.
  • Own availability, latency, scalability, and cost efficiency of the services you build.
  • Own projects from technical design and implementation through launch and ongoing iteration, while raising engineering standards.

Qualifications

  • 7+ years of professional backend/infrastructure/platform/product engineering experience (excluding internships).
  • Track record of designing, building, and operating production backend services, developer-facing APIs, or distributed systems.
  • Strong software engineering and systems fundamentals; experience leading technically complex projects from idea to production.
  • Proficiency in one or more backend languages (Python, Go, Rust, or TypeScript).
  • Experience building reliable, scalable systems; ability to reason about distributed architecture, concurrency, latency, observability, and operational tradeoffs.
  • Product judgment and developer empathy to translate complex capabilities into clear APIs.
  • Clear communication and collaboration with researchers, product managers, designers, infrastructure engineers, and customers.
  • Ownership mindset, comfort with ambiguity, and willingness to learn directly from users while improving engineering quality.
  • Experience with real-time streaming, audio processing, speech systems, image generation, computer vision, or multimodal AI applications is helpful but not required.

Skills

Required:Backend developmentDistributed systems designProgramming languagesProduct-oriented API design
Nice to have:Streaming and real-time systems

Benefits

  • Medical, dental, and vision insurance for you and your family with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts
  • Pre-tax Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and commuter accounts
  • 401(k) retirement plan with employer match
  • Paid parental leave (up to 24 weeks for birth parents, 20 weeks for non-birthing parents) plus paid medical and caregiver leave (up to 8 weeks)
  • Paid time off: flexible PTO for exempt and up to 15 days annually for non-exempt
  • 13+ paid company holidays and additional paid office closures; 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
  • Relocation support for eligible employees
  • Additional fringe benefits (e.g., charitable donation matching, wellness stipends)
  • Details available during hiring process
Last updated Sep 24, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About OpenAI

ai-infrastructure-and-developmentliquid-ai-recruiting-targetllmsetter-30setter-30-2026-q1speech-to-texttext-to-speechvoice-ai-stack
Company profileWebsite

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