Software Engineer, Data Infrastructure Job at OpenAI (San Francisco)

Software Engineer, Data Infrastructure

OpenAI

Location:
United States , San Francisco

Category:
IT - Software Development

Contract Type:
Not provided

Salary:

185000.00 - 385000.00 USD / Year

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Job Description:

Data Platform at OpenAI owns the foundational data stack powering critical product, research, and analytics workflows. We operate some of the largest Spark compute fleets in production; design, and build data lakes and metadata systems on Iceberg and Delta with a vision toward exabyte-scale architecture; run high throughput streaming platforms on Kafka and Flink; provide orchestration with Airflow; and support ML feature engineering tooling such as Chronon. Our mission is to deliver reliable, secure, and efficient data access at scale and accelerate intelligent, AI assisted data workflows. Join us to build and operate these core platforms that underpin OpenAI products, research, and analytics. We’re not just scaling infrastructure – we’re redefining how people interact with data. Our vision includes intelligent interfaces and AI-assisted workflows that make working with data faster, more reliable, and more intuitive.

Job Responsibility:

Design, build, and maintain data infrastructure systems such as distributed compute, data orchestration, distributed storage, streaming infrastructure, machine learning infrastructure while ensuring scalability, reliability, and security
Ensure our data platform can scale by orders of magnitude while remaining reliable and efficient
Accelerate company productivity by empowering your fellow engineers & teammates with excellent data tooling and systems
Collaborate with product, research and analytics teams to build the technical foundations capabilities that unlock new features and experiences
Own the reliability of the systems you build, including participation in an on-call rotation for critical incidents
Take full lifecycle ownership: architecture, implementation, production operations, and on-call participation
Scale and harden big data compute and storage platforms
Build and support high-throughput streaming systems
Build and operate low latency data ingestions
Enable secure and governed data access for ML and analytics
Design for reliability and performance at extreme scale

Requirements:

4+ years in data infrastructure engineering OR 4+ years in infrastructure engineering with a strong interest in data
Take pride in building and operating scalable, reliable, secure systems
Comfortable with ambiguity and rapid change
Intrinsic desire to learn and fill in missing skills
Strong talent for sharing learnings clearly and concisely with others
Supported Spark, Kafka, Flink, Airflow, Trino, or Iceberg as platforms
Well-versed in infrastructure tooling like Terraform
Experienced in debugging large-scale distributed systems
Excited about solving data infrastructure problems in the AI space

What we offer:

Offers Equity
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
Performance-related bonus(es) for eligible employees

Additional Information:

Job Posted:
February 21, 2026

Employment Type:

Fulltime

Work Type:

Hybrid work

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