Software Engineer, Infrastructure, Consumer Devices

About the Role We are seeking a Cloud Infrastructure Engineer to help design and evolve the platforms that power OpenAI’s products. In this role, you will be a hands-on technical leader, driving the architecture, scalability, reliability, and security of critical infrastructure systems. You will help define how we build and operate infrastructure at the next order of magnitude, while influencing technical direction across teams. This role is both deeply technical and highly strategic, requiring strong ownership, sound judgment, and the ability to partner effectively across engineering, product, and research organizations. IN THIS ROLE, YOU WILL: - Design and build scalable, reliable, and secure infrastructure platforms that power OpenAI products - Evolve cloud infrastructure abstractions that enable rapid product development across teams - Architect systems to support significant growth, performance, and operational complexity - Improve server orchestration, networking, distributed systems reliability, and infrastructure security posture - Influence technical direction and infrastructure strategy across multiple teams - Partner closely with product, research, and engineering teams to align infrastructure with evolving needs - Own operational excellence, including participation in on-call rotations, incident response, and production readiness - Mentor engineers and raise the overall technical bar of the organization - Contribute to a culture of high ownership, low ego, and thoughtful collaboration YOU MIGHT THRIVE IN THIS ROLE IF YOU: - 8+ years of experience building and operating large-scale infrastructure systems - Deep expertise in Kubernetes and container orchestration at scale - Strong experience designing cloud abstractions and platform infrastructure (AWS, GCP, Azure, or similar) - Proven track record of leading complex technical initiatives across teams - Experience operating highly reliable, secure, and scalable distributed systems - Security engineering experience or security background preferred - Strong systems thinking with the ability to balance velocity, reliability, and simplicity - Comfortable operating in ambiguous, fast-moving environments - Experience mentoring engineers and influencing technical direction - Passion for building infrastructure that enables impactful products 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 we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic. For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement https://cdn.openai.com/policies/eeo-policy-statement.pdf. Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; ret