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

Software Engineer, Infrastructure Reliability

OpenAI

Location:
United States , San Francisco

Category:
IT - Software Development

Contract Type:
Not provided

Salary:

255000.00 - 385000.00 USD / Year

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Job Description:

You’ll be at the heart of scaling and hardening the infrastructure that powers some of the most widely used AI systems in the world. You’ll help ensure our systems are highly reliable, observable, performant, and secure—so researchers can iterate quickly, and products like ChatGPT and the OpenAI API can serve millions of users safely and effectively. This is a hands-on, high-leverage role for engineers who thrive on ownership, love solving deep technical problems across the stack, and want to work on systems that support cutting-edge research and deploy at global scale. You’ll play a key part in shaping technical direction, proactively improving system resilience, and collaborating closely with infra, product, and research teams to turn complex infrastructure into reliable platforms.

Job Responsibility:

Design, build, and operate reliable and performant systems used across engineering
Identify and fix performance bottlenecks and inefficiencies, ensuring our infrastructure can scale to the next order of magnitude
Dig deep to resolve complex issues
Continuously improve automation to reduce manual work
Improve internal tooling and our developer experience
Contribute to incident response, postmortems, and the development of best practices around system reliability and scalability

Requirements:

4+ years of relevant industry experience
2+ years leading large scale, complex projects or teams as an engineer or tech lead
A passion for distributed systems at scale with a focus on reliability, scalability, security, and continuous improvement
Proven experience as an reliability engineer, production engineer, or a similar role in a fast-paced, rapidly scaling company
Strong proficiency in cloud infrastructure (like AWS, GCP, Azure) and IaC tools such as Terraform
Proficiency in programming / scripting languages
Experience with containerization technologies and container orchestration platforms like Kubernetes
Experience with observability tools such as Datadog, Prometheus, Grafana, Splunk and ELK stack
Experience with microservices architecture and service mesh technologies
Knowledge of security best practices in cloud environments
Strong understanding of distributed systems, networking, and database technologies
Excellent problem-solving skills and ability to work in a fast-paced environment

Nice to have:

Have a deep understanding of distributed systems principles and a proven track record in building and operating scalable and reliable systems
Have a keen eye for performance and optimization
Are comfortable working in Linux environments, and with tools like Kubernetes, Terraform, CI/CD pipelines, and modern observability stacks
Are experienced in collaborating with cross-functional teams
Have a humble attitude, an eagerness to help your colleagues, and a desire to do whatever it takes to make the team succeed
Own problems end-to-end, and are willing to pick up whatever knowledge you're missing to get the job done
Are comfortable with ambiguity and rapid change

What we offer:

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

Additional Information:

Job Posted:
February 21, 2026

Employment Type:

Fulltime

Work Type:

On-site work

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