Data Scientist, Infrastructure

Details

About the Team

The infrastructure team helps deliver OpenAI’s most capable models and products to the world by scaling infrastructure and turning demand into useful FLOPS. The team collaborates across research, engineering, design, and business to turn cutting-edge AI advancements into impactful, real-world applications. It ensures the right compute is available at the right time and place to support demanding workloads, enabling OpenAI’s products and research to launch reliably and at scale.

About the Role

As a Data Scientist on the Infrastructure team, you will help shape how OpenAI scales the infrastructure powering its products and research. The team focuses on aligning infrastructure measurement, planning, scaling, allocation, and efficiency to drive measurable impact across the company.

You will guide the definition of foundational datasets for infrastructure resources, develop metrics that inform key decisions, build forecasting and optimization models, and establish source-of-truth dashboards and analyses that help teams understand and improve infrastructure usage. You will partner closely with engineering, research, and product teams to shape the infrastructure strategy.

This role is based in San Francisco, California. OpenAI uses a hybrid work model requiring three days in the office per week and offers relocation assistance to new employees.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain foundational datasets and metrics reflecting infrastructure usage, efficiency, and scaling.
• Develop forecasting and optimization models to support infrastructure planning and resource allocation.
• Partner with engineering, research, and product teams to shape infrastructure strategy through data.
• Create source-of-truth dashboards and analyses that guide infrastructure decisions across OpenAI.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience in a quantitative role in ambiguous environments, ideally in infrastructure, systems, or platform domains at a high-growth company or research organization.
• Experience defining and operationalizing metrics that reflect system performance, resource usage, or efficiency from the ground up.
• Strong foundation in SQL and Python, with a track record of building models and analyses that drive technical and strategic decisions.
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to partner effectively with engineers, researchers, and product stakeholders.
• Strategic mindset that goes beyond statistical testing to identify actionable insights and long-term tradeoffs.

Preferred Qualifications

• Proven track record of operating as a data partner in large-scale backend systems.
• Ability to navigate fast-paced execution while anchoring decisions in long-term impact.
• Strong programming background, including the ability to run simulations and prototype variants.
• Experience in natural language processing, large language models, or generative AI.

Benefits

• Base salary range of $230,000–$385,000 per year, plus equity.
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance for employees and families, with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts.
• Pre-tax accounts for Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and commuter expenses.
• 401(k) retirement plan with employer match.
• Paid parental, medical, and caregiver leave.
• Paid time off, company holidays, office closures, and paid sick and safe time.
• 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 be provided, including charitable donation matching and wellness stipends.

OpenAI is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities. Background checks are administered in accordance with applicable law.