Backend Software Engineer, ChatGPT ImageGen

Details

About the Team

The ChatGPT organization at OpenAI supports its mission by bringing advanced AI capabilities to hundreds of millions of users worldwide. The Image Generation team is responsible for a rapidly growing ChatGPT experience that enables users to create, edit, and transform images through natural language. Recent advances in multimodal image models have improved image quality, instruction following, editing precision, consistency, and text rendering, enabling new creative and professional workflows.

The team works at the intersection of research, infrastructure, and product to build systems that power image generation at global scale. It partners with researchers, product engineers, designers, and platform teams to bring state-of-the-art image capabilities to millions of users.

About the Role

The Backend Software Engineer will help build the systems that power image creation and editing across ChatGPT. The role focuses on backend infrastructure for generating, editing, and iterating on visual content using multimodal AI models. Responsibilities include building scalable services, orchestration systems, APIs, storage platforms, and distributed infrastructure supporting large-scale image generation and editing workflows.

The role involves partnering with product, research, and mobile teams to transform AI capabilities into reliable and performant user experiences.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate backend systems for image generation and image editing experiences in ChatGPT.
• Develop scalable APIs, services, and infrastructure supporting multimodal AI workflows.
• Optimize reliability, latency, throughput, and cost across large-scale distributed systems.
• Partner with researchers to productionize new image generation capabilities and bring them to users quickly and safely.
• Collaborate with Android, iOS, web, and full-stack engineers to build seamless end-to-end product experiences.
• Drive technical architecture decisions across storage, serving, orchestration, and platform systems.
• Use data and experimentation to identify opportunities to improve user experience, performance, and system efficiency.
• Help shape engineering culture through technical leadership, mentorship, and operational excellence.

Requirements

• Experience building and operating large-scale backend or distributed systems.
• Strong proficiency in modern backend technologies and cloud-native architectures.
• Experience designing APIs, service-oriented architectures, and highly reliable production systems.
• Ability to work across the stack and partner closely with product and research teams.
• Strong analytical skills and an ability to use data to inform technical and product decisions.
• Strong sense of ownership and comfort navigating ambiguity in fast-moving environments.
• Excitement about multimodal AI and infrastructure for visual creation.
• Curiosity about translating cutting-edge AI research into products used by millions of people.

Benefits

• Equity, performance-related bonuses for eligible employees, and comprehensive benefits.
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance, with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts.
• Pre-tax accounts for health, dependent care, and commuter expenses.
• 401(k) retirement plan with employer match.
• Paid parental, medical, and caregiver leave.
• Paid time off, paid company holidays, office closures, and paid sick or safe time as required by law.
• Mental health and wellness support.
• Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage.
• Annual learning and development stipend.
• Daily office meals and eligible meal delivery credits.
• Relocation support for eligible employees.
• Additional taxable fringe benefits may include charitable donation matching and wellness stipends.