Principal Software Engineer, Codex Cyber

Details

Our Cyber team builds AI systems and products that help trusted defenders understand and respond to cyber threats while improving the safety and reliability of frontier models in security-sensitive settings. The team works across product engineering, model training, evaluations, safeguards, and deployment to make advanced cyber capabilities useful to defenders and responsibly managed. We collaborate closely with Safety/Preparedness, Research, Security, Legal, Communications, Go-to-Market, and external partners across OpenAI’s broader cyber work.

About the Role

We’re looking for research and software engineers to join Codex Cyber. You’ll help define and ship security products, work with trusted defenders and customers, shape model training and access patterns, and build research and evaluation systems for assessing cyber capabilities, validating safeguards, and improving training data. This role is hands-on and cross-functional, connecting product launches, model development, safety work, and real-world security use cases.

Responsibilities

• Help define and execute the technical roadmap for Codex Cyber’s security products, including evaluations, safeguards, trusted-defender workflows, and deployment decisions.
• Work with trusted defenders, customers, and partner teams to understand cyber use cases, evaluate risk, and turn feedback into product and research priorities.
• Shape cyber-specific model training and access patterns, including data, evaluations, validation, and deployment criteria.
• Build and validate systems for measuring cyber capabilities, monitoring misuse risk, and proving safeguards work in practice.
• Collaborate with Safety/Preparedness, Research, Security, Legal, Communications, Go-to-Market, and external partners on company-wide cyber priorities.
• Translate frontier cyber research into launch-ready tools, operational playbooks, and durable infrastructure for Codex and security products.

Requirements

• Comfortable working in 0→1 environments and navigating ambiguity to build security products that responsibly bring frontier AI capabilities to trusted defenders.
• Able to move fluidly between product launches, customer and defender partnerships, model training, evaluation science, and security research.
• 10+ years of experience in Python, TypeScript/JavaScript, or similar languages, with the judgment to build reliable systems in ambiguous, high-stakes domains.
• Deep understanding of cyber capability, misuse risk, access patterns, safeguards, and deployment tradeoffs in high-stakes environments.
• Experience in ML systems, security products, cyber evaluations, model training, safety engineering, or trusted customer deployments.

Benefits

• Base pay within the listed range plus generous equity and performance-related bonus(es) for eligible employees.
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance 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 leave (up to 24 weeks for birth parents and 20 weeks for non-birthing parents), paid medical and caregiver leave, and paid time off (flexible PTO for exempt employees; up to 15 days annually for non-exempt employees).
• 13+ paid company holidays and additional company office closures, plus paid sick or safe time as required by local law.
• Mental health and wellness support; employer-paid basic life and disability coverage.
• Annual learning and development stipend; daily meals in offices and meal delivery credits as eligible.
• Relocation support for eligible employees; additional taxable fringe benefits such as charitable donation matching and wellness stipends.

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 AI capabilities and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. We are an equal opportunity employer and are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities. Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law.