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Software Engineer, Host Assurance

OpenAI· Security
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Hybrid (San Francisco), Hybrid (Seattle), Hybrid (US - Remote)$266k - $445k + equityFull-timePosted 1mo ago

About the role

Software Engineer role focused on building and operating the Host Assurance platform to establish and maintain trust in OpenAI’s compute infrastructure across bare-metal and VM environments, with responsibilities spanning design, implementation, testing, rollout, observability, and on-call production support.

Responsibilities

  • Design, build, and operate components of the Host Assurance platform that establish trust in both bare-metal & VM hosts before they are eligible for production use.
  • Help ensure hosts are verifiably trustworthy from delivery and installation through secure bootstrap and readiness to join orchestration systems.
  • Build and improve systems such as machine identity, certificate issuance and enrollment, HSM-backed or key-management-backed trust services, host attestation, measurement, and baseline verification tooling.
  • Validate delivered hardware and firmware against vendor claims and continuously detect and manage drift over time.
  • Eliminate insecure bootstrap patterns while preserving deployment throughput and operational reliability. Partner with provisioning, fleet, and orchestration teams to deliver paved paths where the secure approach is the easiest approach.
  • Own software components through implementation, operational readiness, launch, and ongoing operation. Define readiness criteria, validate behavior under load and failure, establish monitoring and actionable alerts, plan staged rollouts and tested recovery procedures, and maintain runbooks.
  • Participate in production support via oncall rotation.
  • Help define observable, testable security properties for host platforms and improve the telemetry and validation needed to enforce them in practice.
  • Work across different deployment models and provider boundaries while maintaining a consistent bar for host trust outcomes.

Qualifications

  • Have strong software engineering experience building and operating reliable production systems at scale.
  • Bring depth in distributed systems, backend or platform engineering, operating systems, or infrastructure security. Experience with PKI, HSMs, machine identity, attestation, secure boot, or hardware security is valuable but not required.
  • Can reason across services, APIs, and host software, and learn the boot, firmware, and hardware trust mechanisms relevant to your work. Apply sound judgment to trust boundaries, correctness, and safe failure behavior.
  • Have experience writing production quality code and ability to reason clearly about failure modes, operational safety, and long-term maintainability.
  • Have experience supporting critical production systems at scale, such as being on-call.
  • Balance rigor with pragmatism, and care about making strong security controls deployable in real-world environments.
  • Are self-directed, low ego, and willing to work across disciplines to solve the most important problems.
  • Enjoy building in ambiguous spaces where the architecture is still emerging, stakes are at all time high, and the future is being built.

Skills

Required:Software engineeringDistributed systems
Nice to have:PKI / HSM / machine identity

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 (1 hour per 30 hours worked, or more, as required by applicable state or local law)
  • Mental health and wellness support
  • Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage
  • Annual learning and development stipend to fuel your professional growth
  • Daily meals in our offices, and meal delivery credits as eligible
  • Relocation support for eligible employees
  • Additional taxable fringe benefits, such as charitable donation matching and wellness stipends, may also be provided.
Last updated Sep 10, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About OpenAI

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