Research Engineer, Privacy

Details

The Privacy Engineering Team at OpenAI integrates privacy into products and systems that handle user data. The team builds production services, develops privacy-preserving techniques, and provides tools that support responsible data use.

The role focuses on applying privacy-enhancing technologies to AI systems, investigating the interaction between privacy and machine learning, improving data anonymization, and preventing model inversion and membership inference attacks. The position is located in San Francisco, and relocation assistance is available.

Responsibilities

• Design and prototype privacy-preserving machine-learning algorithms, including differential privacy, secure aggregation, and federated learning, for deployment at OpenAI scale.
• Measure and strengthen model robustness against membership inference, model inversion, and data memorization leaks while balancing utility with provable guarantees.
• Develop internal libraries, evaluation suites, and documentation that make privacy techniques accessible to engineering and research teams.
• Lead investigations into privacy–performance trade-offs for large models and publish insights that inform model-training and product-safety decisions.
• Define and codify privacy standards, threat models, and audit procedures covering the ML lifecycle, from dataset curation through post-deployment monitoring.
• Collaborate with Security, Policy, Product, and Legal teams to translate regulatory requirements into technical safeguards and tooling.

Requirements

• Hands-on research or production experience with privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs).
• Fluency in modern deep-learning stacks such as PyTorch or JAX.
• Ability to turn cutting-edge research papers into reliable, well-tested code.
• Experience stress-testing models for private data leakage and explaining complex attack vectors to non-experts.
• A track record of publishing or implementing novel privacy or security work.
• Ability to bridge academic research and real-world systems.
• Ability to work across open-ended research and production feature development in a fast-moving, cross-disciplinary environment.
• Strong communication and documentation skills, with a commitment to building privacy-respecting AI systems.

Benefits

• Base salary of $380,000–$445,000 per year.
• 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, company holidays, office closures, and paid sick or safe time as applicable.
• 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 benefits may include charitable donation matching and wellness stipends.

OpenAI is an equal opportunity employer. Background checks and reasonable accommodation processes apply in accordance with applicable laws.