Software Engineer, Infrastructure, Consumer Devices

Openai Com
San Francisco, US
Remote

Who this role is best for

Aimed at mid-level infrastructure engineers with deep Kubernetes expertise who thrive in ambiguous, fast-moving environments.

Best fit for

  • Experienced infrastructure engineers comfortable with on-call rotations and incident response.
    — “Own operational excellence, including participation in on-call rotations and incident response
  • Technical leaders who can mentor engineers and influence cross-team direction.
    — “Mentor engineers and raise the overall technical bar of the organization
  • Systems thinkers balancing velocity, reliability, and simplicity in cloud platforms.
    — “Strong systems thinking with the ability to balance velocity, reliability, and simplicity

Things to consider

  • Must operate effectively in ambiguous, fast-moving environments.
    — “Comfortable operating in ambiguous, fast-moving environments

How to stand out

  • Highlight specific examples of scaling Kubernetes clusters in production.
    — “Deep expertise in Kubernetes and container orchestration at scale
  • Demonstrate experience designing cloud abstractions for multiple teams.
    — “Strong experience designing cloud abstractions and platform infrastructure
  • Showcase cross-team leadership in complex technical initiatives.
    — “Proven track record of leading complex technical initiatives across teams
Pace · Fast PacedCollaboration · HighAutonomy · HighDecision Impact · CompanyLevel · Mid

Derived from job-description analysis by Serendipath's career intelligence engine.

What success looks like

  • Designed and built scalable, reliable, and secure infrastructure platforms
  • Influenced technical direction and infrastructure strategy across multiple teams
Typical background
8+ years of experience in cloud infrastructure and operations

Skills & requirements

Required

Kubernetes And Container OrchestrationCloud Infrastructure DesignScalability And ReliabilityDistributed SystemsOperational ExcellenceMentoring

Preferred

Experience With Openai's Products

Stack & domain

KubernetesContainer OrchestrationCloud AbstractionsPlatform InfrastructureServer OrchestrationNetworkingDistributed Systems ReliabilityOwnershipJudgmentPartnershipMentorshipInfluenceCollaborationSystems ThinkingVelocityReliabilitySimplicityCloud InfrastructureAi Products

About the role

As a Cloud Infrastructure Engineer at OpenAI, you'll be crafting and refining the backbone of OpenAI's technology, ensuring it can handle the demands of a rapidly growing user base, while also mentoring fellow engineers and shaping the future of AI infrastructure.

Original posting from Openai Com via Ashby

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, and reliability 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, and distributed systems reliability
  • 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 and incident response
  • 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
  • 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

Why This Role Matters

This role is critical to enabling OpenAI to scale its products and infrastructure to the next level. You will help define how we build and operate the systems that power some of the most widely used AI products in the world.

Your work will directly impact the reliability, scalability, and velocity of OpenAI’s technology—helping bring advanced AI capabilities to millions of users safely and effectively.

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; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

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.

Source: Openai Com careers (Ashby)

Similar roles