Software Engineer - Privacy & Compliance

The role

You will architect and build backend systems to enforce data privacy and automate compliance at scale. You will work with product, infrastructure, security, and legal teams to embed privacy-by-design into data and access layers.

What you will do

• Design, build, and operate backend services for policy-driven data access and privacy protections.
• Develop distributed authorization and identity-aware enforcement mechanisms.
• Implement auditability, policy hooks, and enforcement observability.
• Partner with Security, Legal, and Compliance to convert requirements into technical designs and APIs.
• Harden data platforms and backend services through schema-level controls.
• Collaborate with infrastructure teams to ensure consistent enforcement.
• Contribute patterns, libraries, and education for trustworthy data access.

Required qualifications

• 5+ years of industry experience building and operating backend or infrastructure systems in production.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals.
• Fluency in at least one major programming language (e.g., Python, Go, Rust, C++, Java).
• Experience with distributed authorization, RBAC/ACL systems, encryption-based access, or policy engines.
• Familiarity with global privacy regulations and their architectural implications.
• Ability to influence and collaborate with teams across legal, compliance, product, and engineering.
• A bias toward practical, impactful solutions that balance privacy protections with product needs.

Nice to have

• Experience with cloud platforms (e.g., Azure, AWS, GCP) and large-scale data systems.
• Background in security engineering, privacy engineering, or data governance.
• Experience with control-plane or metadata-driven enforcement systems.
• Exposure to data platforms or ML infrastructure.
• Prior experience in a regulated or highly sensitive data environment.

Before you apply

• Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law.

About the company

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity.