Software Engineer, Systems Generalist

About the Team

We build distributed, scalable infrastructure to bring OpenAI's technology to the world through products like ChatGPT and the OpenAI API.

We seek to learn from deployment and distribute the benefits of AI, while ensuring that this powerful tool is used responsibly and safely. Safety is more important to us than unfettered growth.

About the Role

We are looking for a highly skilled Software Engineer (Systems) to join our team and lead the development of scalable, reliable distributed systems that power the infrastructure that brings our technology to the world. You’ll work closely with stakeholders to understand infrastructure, data, and compute needs, setting the technical strategy that supports cutting-edge research and product development. This is a critical role for someone passionate about solving complex engineering problems at scale, ensuring their performance, scalability, and reliability.

In this role you will:

• Design and build performant, reliable, and highly scalable distributed systems to support key infrastructure.

• Analyze performance and scalability bottlenecks, and develop solutions to improve system efficiency.

• Pinpoint and troubleshoot system issues, instrument components as needed, and ultimately implement fixes.

• Partner with researchers, engineers, product managers, and designers to bring new features and research capabilities to the world

• Set technical strategy and oversee the development of high-scale, reliable infrastructure systems that meet business goals.

• Help create a diverse, equitable, and inclusive culture that makes all feel welcome while enabling radical candor and the challenging of group think

• Like all other teams, we are responsible for the reliability of the systems we build. This includes an on-call rotation to respond to critical incidents as needed

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Have meaningful experience with building and managing large-scale distributed systems to deliver new product capabilities and to handle increasing scale

• Have meaningful experience with building and running systems in any of the following areas: data systems, storage systems, caching, search, or other building blocks for distributed systems.

• Care deeply about reliability, scalability, and performance of large-scale systems.

• Have a humble attitude, an eagerness to help your colleagues, and a desire to do whatever it takes to make the team succeed

• Are comfortable working in ambiguous and rapidly changing environments, own problems end-to-end, and help our team iterate on new product and research initiatives..

Qualifications:

• 4+ years of relevant industry experience, with 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.

• Expertise in systems programming, including experience with multi-threading and concurrency. Fluency in C++ is preferred, though not required. 

• Preferably, experience in one of the following domains: databases, large data systems, storage systems, caching, search and information retrieval, or other building blocks for distributed systems.

• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to build consensus among stakeholders both internally and externally.

Benefits and Perks

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance for you and your family

• Mental health and wellness support

• 401(k) plan with 4% matching

• Unlimited time off and 18+ company holidays per year

• Paid parental leave (20 weeks) and family-planning support

• Annual learning & development stipend ($1,500 per year)

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity. 

We are an equal opportunity employer and do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability or any other legally protected status. 

OpenAI Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement

For US Based Candidates: Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link.

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At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.