OpenAI - AI Engineer

About the team

OpenAI is one of the leaders in AI research and deployment, and we're working to build safe Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). We believe AGI has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges such as climate change, affordable healthcare, and personalized education, and we want the economic upside of AGI to be widely shared.

About the role

The Platform Success team is at the intersection of groundbreaking research and real-world applications, responsible for ensuring developers and enterprises are successful in building the most innovative, impactful, and scalable production applications with the OpenAI API platform. We guide and support customers to achieve maximum benefits, value, and adoption from deploying our highly-capable models, and at times push beyond the boundaries of existing models. OpenAI's customers represent a range of diverse backgrounds and maturity, from early-stage startups to established global enterprises.

We are looking for a driven and innovative ML software engineer as our founding AI Engineer to ideate, scope, and train custom models for previously unsolvable problems that deliver significant value for our customers and, in turn, their customers. You will have the opportunity to create novel models across domains that push beyond the boundary of existing foundational models for our most strategic and high-impact platform customers, serve as the technical authority for the model customization program, and ultimately be the catalyst for discovering and delivering new capabilities and possibilities for our fine-tuning API. You will collaborate closely with the Applied Research, Product, and Engineering teams, and will report to the Head of Platform Success.

This role is based in our San Francisco HQ. We offer relocation assistance to new employees.

In this role, you will:

Build and train bespoke models for the most innovative and novel solutions built on our APIs to maximize business impact and innovation for our most strategic customers. 

• Proactively identify gaps in our fine-tuning API product based on evaluating customer needs, and deliver high-quality feedback from training bespoke models to the Product team.
• Serve as the primary technical authority for the model customization program.
• Scale the model customization program through codifying best practices, sharing knowledge, documentation, creating tools, and publishing technical accelerators internally, enabling a more repetitive and replicable motion.
• Be the connective tissue between Applied Research, GTM, Product, and Engineering, especially when it comes to frontier model techniques for customer use cases.
• Highlight new and creative ways our foundational models can be used for new domains.

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Have 7+ years of software engineering and ML experience.
• Have built and/or delivered prototypes on top of our API platform.
• Have led complex technical projects and programs with many stakeholders.
• Proactively identify opportunities for maximizing our customers’ business value through leveraging the OpenAI API.
• Own problems end-to-end, and be willing to pick up whatever knowledge you're missing to get the job done to ensure both your team and our customers succeed.
• Have a humble attitude and an eagerness to help others with empathy.
• Have a desire to work directly with technical and non-technical customers, be a good listener and interpreter of their needs, and not be afraid to inquire deeper.
• Operate with high horsepower, be adept at frequent context switching and working on multiple projects at once with expansive ownership, and ruthlessly prioritize.
• Thrive in dynamic environments and can navigate ambiguity with ease.
• Promote diversity in thought.
• Be an effective and polished communicator.
• Are passionate about ML, data science, and widening the reach of practical AI technologies.

Benefits and Perks

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance for you and your family
• Mental health and wellness support
• 401(k) plan
• Unlimited time off and 18+ company holidays per year
• Paid parental leave (20 weeks) and family-planning support
• Annual learning & development stipend ($1,500 per year)

We are an equal opportunity employer and do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability or other legally protected statuses. Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records. 

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via accommodation@openai.com.

Compensation, Benefits and Perks

Total compensation also includes generous equity and benefits.

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance for you and your family
• Mental health and wellness support
• 401(k) plan with 50% matching
• Unlimited time off and 18+ company holidays per year
• Paid parental leave (20 weeks) and family-planning support
• Annual learning & development stipend ($1,500 per year)

Annual Salary Range

$310,000—$385,000 USD