Software Engineer, API Frontiers

The role

You will build and operate backend services and APIs that bring frontier model capabilities to developers. The role involves designing developer interfaces, managing staged rollouts, and improving request-processing performance.

What you will do

• Design, build, and operate APIs and backend services
• Partner with Research, Safety, Codex, and API teams to define API behavior and deliver safe, staged launches
• Build API capabilities for agent workflows
• Strengthen long-running request reliability
• Improve request-processing performance and tail latency
• Turn developer feedback and production failures into better observability, diagnostics, and lasting product improvements

Required qualifications

• 5+ years of experience building and operating backend services or developer-facing APIs in production
• Strong software engineering fundamentals, with practical knowledge of distributed systems, concurrency, and asynchronous execution
• Ability to diagnose production failures and performance bottlenecks using observability data and profiling
• Product judgment and developer empathy
• Experience taking ownership of ambiguous technical problems
• Clear communication and effective collaboration across engineering, research, product, and safety disciplines

Nice to have

• Experience with Rust
• Experience with streaming protocols or WebSockets
• Experience with long-running workflow systems

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.