Principal Software Engineer, Full Stack — Codex

Details

We’re hiring a Principal Software Engineer to help define and build the next generation of AI-powered software development workflows.

“Full stack” in this role extends beyond traditional frontend and backend development. You will set technical direction and lead major product initiatives spanning user interfaces, developer tooling, workflow orchestration, agent and prompt design, backend systems, and cloud infrastructure.

This is a highly product-oriented technical leadership role. You will identify high-leverage opportunities across the software development lifecycle, turn ambiguous user and technical problems into durable product and system strategies, and lead execution across multiple engineers and partner teams. Your work will shape both the architecture of Codex and how developers design, write, review, test, and maintain software.

You will operate as a senior individual contributor, remaining deeply involved in design and implementation while raising the technical judgment, execution quality, and ambition of the broader team.

Responsibilities

• Set the technical and product direction for significant areas of Codex, translating an evolving product vision into scalable architectures and an actionable engineering strategy.
• Lead complex, multi-quarter initiatives spanning client applications, backend services, agent systems, cloud infrastructure, and developer tooling.
• Design AI-powered workflows that generalize across languages, codebases, development environments, and organizations while remaining intuitive, reliable, and safe.
• Make high-consequence architectural decisions under ambiguity, balancing rapid product learning with long-term system quality and adaptability.
• Identify opportunities that cut across existing team or product boundaries, align stakeholders around a direction, and drive work from exploration through launch and iteration.
• Partner with product, design, research, infrastructure, security, and go-to-market teams to turn emerging model capabilities and developer needs into coherent product experiences.
• Work directly with developers, open-source maintainers, startups, and large enterprises to uncover unmet needs and distinguish foundational opportunities from incremental improvements.
• Establish patterns and standards for reliability, observability, performance, experimentation, and evaluation across AI-powered developer workflows.
• Serve as a technical multiplier by reviewing critical designs, mentoring engineers, improving engineering practices, and helping the team navigate difficult product and technical decisions.
• Contribute directly to implementation, particularly where the problem is novel, technically demanding, or requires connecting multiple layers of the product.

Requirements

• Experience leading the design and delivery of technically complex, user-facing systems with impact extending beyond a single feature or team.
• Deep software-engineering expertise combined with exceptional product judgment and the ability to work across product interfaces, distributed systems, infrastructure, and developer tooling.
• A track record of creating clarity in ambiguous problem spaces, setting technical direction, and bringing multiple teams or disciplines along.
• Ability to remain hands-on while increasing the effectiveness of other engineers through architecture, mentorship, decision-making, and technical leadership.
• Deep understanding of modern software-development workflows and where AI agents require new interaction and system designs.
• Experience building or operating AI-powered products, including understanding challenges related to nondeterminism, evaluation, latency, reliability, safety, and rapidly evolving model capabilities.
• Ability to make thoughtful tradeoffs between speed, product learning, technical quality, and long-term leverage.
• Ability to develop strong perspectives from user evidence while revising those perspectives as technology and user behavior evolve.
• Clear communication across engineering, product, design, research, and executive audiences, particularly when decisions involve substantial uncertainty or organizational complexity.
• Interest in defining problems as well as solving them and creating the technical and organizational conditions for others to deliver excellent work.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. OpenAI pushes the boundaries of AI system capabilities and seeks to deploy them safely through its products.

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

Benefits

• Base salary of $459,000–$536,000 per year.
• Equity, performance-related bonuses for eligible employees, and additional benefits.
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance, with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts.
• Pre-tax FSA, dependent care, and commuter accounts.
• 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 meals in offices and eligible meal delivery credits.
• Relocation support for eligible employees.
• Additional taxable fringe benefits may include charitable donation matching and wellness stipends.