Software Engineer, Traffic Infrastructure

Details

The Cloud Infrastructure team builds and operates the infrastructure behind OpenAI’s products, including ChatGPT and the API. The Traffic team owns how traffic enters cloud environments, moves between services, clusters, and regions, and reaches external dependencies.

The work spans cloud networking, Kubernetes networking, ingress and egress gateways, proxies, load balancing, traffic steering, and the systems, controls, and observability that make these paths reliable, secure, efficient, and straightforward for engineering teams to use.

You will build and operate networking and traffic infrastructure connecting products and services across clouds and regions. The work spans L3, L4, and L7 networking, including IP connectivity, NAT, transport behavior, service proxies, and application request routing. This role combines software engineering with production ownership and involves working with service owners, infrastructure teams, Security, and cloud providers.

The role is based in San Francisco, California, or Seattle, Washington.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate ingress, egress, and service-to-service connectivity across clusters, regions, and clouds.
• Develop proxies, gateways, controllers, and automation for routing, load balancing, failover, and traffic management.
• Build and evolve cloud networking infrastructure, including private connectivity, NAT, and network isolation.
• Diagnose failures and performance bottlenecks across application, proxy, transport, and cloud networking layers.
• Work with cloud providers when issues extend into their infrastructure.
• Build telemetry and diagnostic tools that explain traffic paths, identify failing components, and help engineers take effective action.
• Partner with Security to implement and validate traffic-path protections, including secure service communication, access controls, egress restrictions, and DDoS defenses.
• Improve latency, throughput, availability, and network efficiency through measurement, testing, and careful production rollouts.
• Create clear interfaces and safe defaults for service teams.
• Participate in on-call and turn operational lessons into changes that prevent recurring failures and reduce manual work.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience building production infrastructure or distributed systems, including substantial work on networking or traffic infrastructure.
• Depth in one or more areas such as cloud networking, Kubernetes networking, proxies and gateways, service meshes, load balancing, or global traffic routing.
• Understanding of networking fundamentals, including IP routing, TCP/UDP, DNS, NAT, TLS, and HTTP/gRPC, and how they affect connectivity and performance.
• Hands-on experience building or operating systems such as Envoy, NGINX, Istio, Cilium, or comparable networking infrastructure.
• Ability to write production software in Go, Rust, C++, Python, or a similar language.
• Experience using software and automation to solve operational problems.
• Ability to investigate unfamiliar failures using evidence, test hypotheses, and follow problems through to verified resolution.
• Ownership of design, implementation, rollout, and ongoing reliability.
• Clear communication across teams when problems cross ownership boundaries.
• Commitment to making infrastructure secure and understandable for dependent engineers.

Deep expertise in every listed technology or networking layer is not required; the team values expertise and willingness to learn across boundaries.

Benefits

• Base pay of $266,000–$445,000 per year.
• Equity, performance-related bonuses for eligible employees, and 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 required by law.
• 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 taxable fringe benefits may include charitable donation matching and wellness stipends.