Software Engineer, Research - Human Data

Details

OpenAI’s Human Data engineering team builds the systems that enable scalable, high-quality human feedback used to train and align advanced AI models. Engineers on this team collaborate closely with researchers to turn alignment techniques into production-ready feedback loops, tooling, and infrastructure.

This role is based in San Francisco, CA. The team uses a hybrid work model (3 days in the office per week) and offers relocation assistance to new employees. The position partners with research, engineering, and program leads to shape feedback loops and model interaction paradigms, and involves building secure systems from experimental prototypes through production deployment.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain robust full-stack systems for feedback collection, data labeling, and evaluation pipelines with high security standards.
• Translate experimental alignment research into scalable production infrastructure, including inference and model training stacks.
• Design and iterate on user-facing tools and backend services to support high-quality data workflows.
• Partner with researchers, engineers, and program leads to shape feedback loops and model interaction paradigms.
• Drive infrastructure improvements that enable faster iteration and scaling across OpenAI’s frontier models, from internal research tooling to production ChatGPT.

Requirements

• Strong software engineering fundamentals and experience building production systems at scale.
• Comfortable with full-stack development and end-to-end ownership (backend pipelines to user interfaces).
• Experience or willingness to work across inference and model training stacks, evaluation pipelines, and data-labeling workflows.
• Attention to security, reliability, and building inclusive tooling that enhances model safety and usefulness.
• Motivated by collaborating with research teams and solving novel, ambiguous problems.

Benefits

• Salary range: $255,000 — $405,000 base (offers equity and other compensation components).
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts.
• Pre-tax accounts (Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, commuter expenses).
• 401(k) retirement plan with employer match.
• Paid parental leave, paid medical and caregiver leave, flexible PTO / paid time off policies.
• 13+ paid company holidays and 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; additional taxable fringe benefits (charitable matching, wellness stipends).

Additional information

• OpenAI is an equal opportunity employer and provides reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities.
• Background checks will be administered in accordance with applicable law; certain duties involve access to secure information technology systems and data security obligations.