Engineering Manager, Identity Platform

OpenAI•San Francisco, CA

8d•$293,000 - $385,000

About The Position

As an Engineering Manager, Identity Platform, you will lead a team responsible for foundational identity services that require high reliability, security, and speed under extreme load. You will define the strategic direction, foster the growth and support of the team, and collaborate closely with engineering and security departments to enhance the platform that facilitates trusted access to OpenAI products. This role involves building and leading a high-performing engineering team, coaching and mentoring engineers and senior technical leads, and defining the technical strategy, roadmap, and execution for OpenAI’s core identity systems. You will guide the architecture of large-scale distributed systems with stringent requirements for reliability, privacy, and performance, and partner with Product and Infrastructure teams to meet new product demands and maintain high system standards. Additionally, you will ensure the team operates efficiently, upholds strong engineering practices, and consistently achieves ambitious goals, while establishing processes and a culture that promotes rapid learning, high trust, and responsible innovation. Key responsibilities include leading the team responsible for the authentication stack and token exchange infrastructure, ensuring high availability, strong security, and low-latency performance, as well as owning and improving request validation at the edge for logged-in users, and overseeing systems that enable secure access to user data for internal consumers.

Requirements

10+ years of experience building, scaling, and operating distributed systems at large scale.
3+ years of experience managing high-performance engineering teams in fast-paced, rapidly shifting environments.
Deep experience building and operating high-scale backend systems, with a track record of improving reliability, latency, and security in production.
Broad infrastructure expertise across the stack—from hardware and cluster management to services and storage layers.

Nice To Haves

Care deeply about people leadership, coaching, and helping engineers achieve peak performance.
Communicate clearly, think holistically, and make decisions grounded in both user needs and long-term sustainability.
Experience managing an infrastructure team and are effective at hiring, coaching, and developing engineers while maintaining strong operational excellence.

Responsibilities

Build, lead, and develop a high-performing engineering team.
Coach and mentor engineers and senior technical leads to increase their impact and support their growth.
Define and own the technical strategy, roadmap, and execution for OpenAI’s core identity systems.
Guide the architecture of distributed systems operating at massive scale, with high requirements for reliability, privacy, and performance.
Partner closely with Product and Infrastructure teams to support new product needs and uphold high system standards.
Ensure the team operates effectively, maintains strong engineering rigor, and consistently delivers against ambitious goals.
Establish processes and a culture that enable fast learning, high trust, and responsible innovation.
Lead the team responsible for the authentication stack and token exchange infrastructure, ensuring high availability, strong security posture, and low-latency performance.
Own and improve request validation at the edge for logged-in users, delivering extremely high reliability and fast validation under high throughput.
Oversee systems that enable secure access to user data, improving scalability, reliability, and access patterns for internal consumers across the company.