Software Engineer, Foundations Retrieval

Details

About the Team

The Foundations Research team works on high-risk, high-reward ideas that could shape the next decade of AI. The Search team sits within Foundations, building agentic search by co-designing model–system interfaces with the core search stack (serving, indexing, retrieval) to translate model intent into reliable, real-world actions. The team develops large-scale systems that transform and index vast corpora, enabling models to reason over global knowledge and act dependably. They partner closely with researchers to bring modeling breakthroughs into production.

About the Role

We are looking for a Software Engineer focused on building and scaling retrieval systems. You will work with researchers and engineers to develop infrastructure that enables models to retrieve and act on the right information at the right time. This includes designing and operating indexing systems, retrieval pipelines, and serving layers. The work supports retrieval across OpenAI products and research, with direct impact on system performance, reliability, and scale.

Responsibilities

• Build and scale retrieval infrastructure across indexing, serving, and query execution.
• Develop low-latency, high-throughput systems for real-time model interaction.
• Partner with research to productionize embedding and retrieval techniques.
• Support dense, sparse, and hybrid retrieval pipelines.
• Own system performance, reliability, and observability at scale.
• Collaborate across Pretraining, Inference, and Product teams to integrate retrieval end-to-end.
• Contribute to model–system interfaces for agentic workflows.

Requirements / You Might Thrive in This Role If You Have

• Experience building and scaling distributed systems.
• Background in search, retrieval, or indexing systems.
• Familiarity with embedding-based or ML-powered systems.
• Experience with performance optimization and production reliability.
• Ability to work across ML and systems boundaries.
• First-principles thinking in ambiguous problem spaces.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. The company emphasizes safety and diverse perspectives and is an equal opportunity employer. Background checks will be administered in accordance with applicable law.

Benefits

• Base pay within the listed range, plus equity and performance-related bonuses where eligible.
• 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, medical, and caregiver leave; flexible PTO for exempt employees.
• 13+ paid company holidays and additional coordinated office closures.
• 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.