Software Engineer, Productivity - Model Performance

Details

About the Team

We’re hiring software engineers to make OpenAI’s Model Performance teams more productive. These teams work on the systems, tooling, and infrastructure that help improve model performance across OpenAI’s training and inference workloads at frontier scale.

About the Role

We’re looking for an autonomous, high-ownership developer productivity engineer who cares deeply about helping other engineers move faster, safer, and with more confidence.

This role will sit within OpenAI’s Model Performance organization, contributing to developer infrastructure, CI systems, testing workflows, tooling, and broader performance infrastructure efforts. There is also a strong opportunity to contribute to the Triton project and help improve the systems that support performance-critical engineering work across OpenAI.

In this role you will:

• Improve development workflows for engineers working on model performance infrastructure
• Design and improve CI/CD, release, validation, and testing pipelines
• Build and maintain tools that improve reliability, iteration speed, and engineering confidence
• Partner closely with engineers to identify friction in testing, debugging, deployment, and development workflows
• Contribute to infrastructure efforts that support performance-critical training and inference systems
• Help improve developer experience across Python-heavy codebases and performance-oriented infrastructure
• Work in a high-context, ambiguous environment where ownership and good judgment matter

You might thrive in this role if:

• You are motivated by enabling the people around you and helping engineers do their best work
• You have strong experience with CI/CD, developer infrastructure, testing systems, tooling, or build/release workflows
• You are highly collaborative, empathetic, and comfortable partnering deeply with technical teams
• You are strong in Python and enjoy building reliable, scalable developer tools and infrastructure
• You have experience improving large-scale engineering workflows, especially around CI reliability, test infrastructure, and debugging velocity
• You are self-directed and comfortable operating with ambiguity
• You do not need direct inference or model performance experience, but you are excited to learn the domain and make the team meaningfully more effective
• Experience in the PyTorch ecosystem is highly relevant
• Experience with C++ or Rust is a nice-to-have, but not required
• When you see repeated friction—slow tests, flaky CI, brittle release processes, painful debugging, unclear validation—your instinct is to fix the underlying system
• You are pragmatic and know how to balance high standards with forward progress

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 the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core.

We are an equal opportunity employer and do not discriminate on the basis of protected characteristics.

Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws (including San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act for US-based candidates). The posting also mentions that for unincorporated Los Angeles County workers, certain job duties may involve protecting computer hardware and maintaining confidentiality of proprietary information, and may require access to secure IT systems and related data security obligations.

Compensation and Benefits (Summary)

The compensation tier summary is $230K – $385K. Base pay may vary depending on market location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. If the role is non-exempt, overtime pay will be provided consistent with applicable laws. Total compensation also includes equity and performance-related bonus(es) for eligible employees, plus the benefits listed below.

Benefits include:

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance for you and your family, with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts
• Pre-tax accounts for Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and commuter expenses (parking and transit)
• 401(k) retirement plan with employer match
• Paid parental leave (up to 24 weeks for birth parents and 20 weeks for non-birthing parents), plus paid medical and caregiver leave (up to 8 weeks)
• Paid time off: flexible PTO for exempt employees and up to 15 days annually for non-exempt employees
• 13+ paid company holidays, plus paid sick or safe time (1 hour per 30 hours worked, or more, as required by applicable state or local law)
• Mental health and wellness support
• Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage
• Annual learning and development stipend
• Daily meals in our offices, and meal delivery credits as eligible
• Relocation support for eligible employees
• Additional taxable fringe benefits may also be provided

More details about benefits are available during the hiring process.