Description
Job Posting
Software Engineer, Backend (Knowledge Innovation)
Location
San Francisco; Seattle
Employment Type
Full time
Department
Applied AI
Compensation
- $230K – $385K • Offers Equity
The base pay offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factors, including market location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. If the role is non-exempt, overtime pay will be provided consistent with applicable laws. In addition to the salary range listed above, total compensation also includes generous equity, performance-related bonus(es) for eligible employees, and the following benefits.
- 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.
More details about our benefits are available to candidates during the hiring process.
This role is at-will and OpenAI reserves the right to modify base pay and other compensation components at any time based on individual performance, team or company results, or market conditions.
About the Team The Knowledge Innovation team is scaling OpenAI with OpenAI. We are building a model powered knowledge system that evolves and learns as our products, systems and customers evolve. We leverage our state of the art models, technologies, and products (some external, some still in the lab) to assist or completely automate robust operations supporting both internal and external customers. We support OpenAI customers and internal partners globally, powering systems from customer support to integrity to product insights. We are a self-contained multi-disciplinary team, who enjoy a lightning fast feedback loop with customers at scale, some of whom sit just a few pods away. We iterate fast, and engineer for reliable long-term impact. We're constantly looking for the similarities and patterns in different types of work, and focus on building simple primitives, to apply world class knowledge to many domains.
The work of this team exemplifies use of OpenAI technologies. We build systems so everyone can see the leverage that is possible with well designed AI-based implementations. We do this by working through internal use cases focused on Customers (specifically knowledge systems, automation systems, and automated agent systems) to prove impact, then we scale.
About the Role We’re looking for a Backend Software Engineer to help architect and scale the infrastructure that powers our knowledge systems. This is a deeply technical and highly cross-functional role where you’ll build robust systems and backend services that serve as the foundation for how knowledge is created, accessed, and applied across OpenAI.
In this role, you will:
- Design, build, and maintain backend services and APIs to support intelligent automation and knowledge systems
- Integrate and structure data across internal platforms, transforming it into formats optimized for use by downstream systems and AI workflows.
- Collaborate closely with product, research, and engineering teams to integrate OpenAI models into high-leverage workflows
- Own the full development lifecycle of new backend systems and internal platform capabilities
- Build with scale and maintainability in mind, while rapidly iterating on new ideas
You might be a great fit if you have:
- 4+ years of backend engineering experience at product-driven companies (excluding internships)
- Proficiency in backend technologies. Our tech stack includes Python, FastAPI, and Postgres
- Experience designing and scaling distributed systems, APIs, or data processing pipelines
- A pragmatic mindset. You’re comfortable shipping iteratively while building toward a long-term vision
- An interest in structured knowledge representation, internal search, agent infrastructure, or systems that evolve over time
Curiosity about AI/ML and excitement to work alongside world-class research and product teams (hands-on experience is a bonus, not a must)