Backend Engineer, Consumer Products

OpenAI • San Francisco, CA

1d • Hybrid

About The Position

The Software Engineering team is responsible for designing and building the scalable, performant, and secure backend systems that power our products—from early prototypes to large-scale deployments. We collaborate closely with product, hardware, and full-stack teams to ensure our infrastructure enables fast iteration while setting a strong foundation for long-term growth.
As a Backend Engineer, you will design and build services, APIs, and infrastructure that support evolving product needs. You’ll apply a deep understanding of backend systems and maintain enough end-to-end context—from hardware to cloud—to guide technical decisions that best serve the product and team.
We’re looking for engineers who thrive in fast-paced, collaborative environments and care deeply about building robust systems that scale.
This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We use a hybrid work model of four days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.

Requirements

• Have 7+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a focus on backend systems.
• Have a proven track record of building and scaling systems from early stage to large scale.
• Are proficient with Python and Go, and familiar with a range of server-side technologies.
• Have a strong grasp of system design, performance optimization, and security best practices.
• Can reason about full-stack tradeoffs from hardware through cloud infrastructure.

Nice To Haves

• Have experience with distributed systems and cloud architectures.
• Bring a background in instrumentation, analytics, and performance tuning.
• Are familiar with hardware-cloud integrations or applied AI services.

Responsibilities

• Architect, build, and maintain high-performance, secure backend systems.
• Design APIs, data models, and infrastructure to support evolving product needs.
• Balance near-term development velocity with long-term maintainability and scalability.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to ensure cohesive, end-to-end solutions.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed
• Number of Employees: 5,001-10,000 employees