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Software Engineer, API Safety

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

About the role

OpenAI is seeking product-minded software engineers to join the API Safety team, building safeguards and observability tools for frontier-model deployments and safe API usage.

Responsibilities

  • Design and build dashboards and APIs for safety controls and customer-facing observability.
  • Develop scalable systems that extend trusted safety capabilities to new use cases, customers, and deployment environments.
  • Partner with Safety Research and Integrity to build safeguards that mitigate emerging risks.
  • Be responsible for the availability, latency, and scalability of safeguards across high-volume API traffic.
  • Own projects from technical design and implementation through launch and ongoing iteration, while raising the team’s engineering standards

Qualifications

  • 7+ years of professional experience, excluding internships, in backend, infrastructure, platform, or product engineering roles.
  • A track record of designing, building, and operating production backend services, developer-facing APIs, or distributed systems.
  • Strong software engineering and systems fundamentals, with experience leading technically complex projects from ambiguous ideas to production.
  • Proficiency in one or more general-purpose backend languages, such as Python, Go, Rust, or TypeScript.
  • Experience building reliable, scalable systems and reasoning about distributed architecture, concurrency, latency, observability, and operational tradeoffs.
  • Product judgment and developer empathy, including an ability to turn complex model or infrastructure capabilities into clear, intuitive APIs.
  • Clear communication and a collaborative approach to working with researchers, product managers, designers, infrastructure engineers, and customers.
  • Experience with observability, abuse prevention, trust and safety, identity, security, privacy, compliance, or risk systems is a strong plus.
  • Interest in helping frontier AI reach more developers and businesses responsibly.

Skills

Required:Backend developmentProgramming languagesSystem design and scalabilityCross-functional collaboration
Nice to have:Observability and reliabilitySafety, trust, and risk 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 10, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About OpenAI

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Company profileWebsite

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