Software Engineer, Foundations Search

Responsibilities

• Build and scale retrieval infrastructure across indexing, serving, and query execution
• Develop low-latency, high-throughput systems for real-time model interaction
• Partner with research teams to productionize embedding and retrieval techniques
• Support dense, sparse, and hybrid retrieval pipelines
• Own system performance, reliability, and observability at scale
• Collaborate across Pretraining, Inference, and Product teams to integrate retrieval end-to-end
• Contribute to model-system interfaces for agentic workflows

Requirements

• Experience building and scaling distributed systems
• Strong background in search, retrieval, or indexing systems
• Familiarity with embedding-based or ML-powered systems
• Proven experience with performance optimization and production reliability
• Ability to work across ML and systems boundaries
• First-principles thinking in ambiguous problem spaces

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance for you and your family
• 401(k) retirement plan with employer match
• Paid parental leave (up to 24 weeks for birth parents)
• Flexible PTO for exempt employees
• Daily meals in our offices and meal delivery credits
• Annual learning and development stipend
• Relocation support for eligible employees

About the Company

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products.