Backend Software Engineer, Applied Foundations
At a glance
Highlights
- Onsite in San Francisco
- Build core infrastructure for AI products used by millions
- Focus on safety, reliability, and scalability
Why this role might suit you
A candidate with strong backend expertise in Go, Python, Rust, or C++ and experience building distributed, high‑scale services will thrive building safe, reliable infrastructure for OpenAI's flagship products.
Skills
About the role
About the Team
OpenAI’s Applications Engineering organization builds and operates the products (such as ChatGPT & Codex) that bring our cutting-edge research to millions of users and developers worldwide.
The Applied Foundations team owns the core product and platform layers that make those experiences possible — from identity & access, to safety to payments & commerce across all of our apps. Our teams span product engineering, infrastructure, and safety, working together to deliver technology that is reliable, secure, and trusted at global scale.
About the Role
We’re hiring Backend Software Engineers to design and implement safe services and infrastructure that power our core products.
What You’ll Do
- Architect, build, and improve scalable backend systems and APIs.
- Drive performance, reliability, and safety across distributed services.
- Implement data storage, retrieval, compute, and integration solutions.
- Participate in long-term architectural planning and technical design reviews.
- Collaborate with cross-functional teams to design solutions that protect against and mitigate adversarial attacks without compromising user experience.
You Might Thrive Here If You:
- Have strong experience with distributed systems, APIs, and backend languages (e.g., Go, Python, Rust, C++).
- Have experience setting up and maintaining production backend services and data pipelines.
- Have a humble attitude, an eagerness to help your colleagues, and a desire to do whatever it takes to make the team succeed.
- Enjoy building resilient services that handle large scale and complexity.
- Are self-directed and enjoy figuring out the best way to solve a particular problem
- Own problems end-to-end, and are willing to pick up whatever knowledge you're missing to get the job done.
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.
To notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant, please submit a report through this form https://form.asana.com/?d=57018692298241&k=5MqR40fZd7jlxVUh5J-UeA. No response will be provided to inquiries unrelated to job posting compliance.
We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link https://form.asana.com/?k=bQ7w9h3iexRlicUdWRiwvg&d=57018692298241.
OpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy https://cdn.openai.com/policies/global-employee-and-contractor-privacy-policy.pdf
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.
Compensation
This Backend Engineer role pays $185k-$385k/yr. Within typical range for backend engineer roles in United States.
Questions about this role
How do I apply to this Backend Software Engineer, Applied Foundations role at OpenAI?
Click "Apply with AI Applyd" above. We auto-fill the application from your resume and answer screening questions in seconds. No copy and paste, no juggling tabs.
What's the typical salary for Backend Engineer in United States?
Compensation for Backend Engineer roles in United States varies widely by seniority, employer size, and remote vs onsite arrangement. Check the salary range on this listing when published, or browse our Backend Engineer hub for United States medians across recent openings.
How fast does AI Applyd auto-apply?
Most applications complete in under 90 seconds. You can track the status in your dashboard and watch the screenshot proof land the moment the application submits.
What ATS does OpenAI use?
AI Applyd supports Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Workday, iCIMS, SmartRecruiters, LinkedIn Easy Apply, and most other ATS platforms. If we can submit through the platform, we do.
Want AI Applyd to auto-apply to roles like this?
We tailor your resume per posting, fill the forms, and track replies for you.