Hybrid Research Infrastructure Engineer, Training Systems

at OpenAI

• Job title: Research Infrastructure Engineer, Training Systems
• Job type: Full Time
• Experience level: Mid level, Senior
• Salary: $295,000 - $380,000 per year
• Degree requirement: Bachelor's Degree
• Tech skills: Distributed Systems, Python, PyTorch
• Location requirements: Hybrid, San Francisco, United States

About the role

• Systems engineer focused on ML training infrastructure at OpenAI, building and maintaining large-scale model training systems. Collaborating with research teams to enable novel training approaches and improving infrastructure reliability.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain infrastructure for large-scale model training and experimentation.
• Design APIs and interfaces that make complex training workflows easier to express and harder to misuse.
• Improve reliability, debuggability, and performance across training and data pipelines.
• Debug issues spanning Python, PyTorch, distributed systems, GPUs, networking, and storage.
• Write tests, benchmarks, and diagnostics that catch meaningful regressions.

Requirements

• You want to build systems that enable new model training approaches, not just optimize established ones.
• You have strong systems instincts and care deeply about performance, reliability, and clean abstractions.
• You have good taste in API and interface design, with empathy for the researchers and engineers using your tools.
• You are comfortable working across ML research code and production-quality infrastructure.
• You enjoy debugging from evidence: profiles, traces, logs, tests, and minimal reproductions.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance for you and your family, with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts
• Pre-tax accounts for Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and commuter expenses (parking and transit)
• 401(k) retirement plan with employer match
• Paid parental leave (up to 24 weeks for birth parents and 20 weeks for non-birthing parents), plus paid medical and caregiver leave (up to 8 weeks)
• Paid time off: flexible PTO for exempt employees and up to 15 days annually for non-exempt employees
• 13+ paid company holidays, and multiple paid coordinated company office closures throughout the year for focus and recharge, plus paid sick or safe time (1 hour per 30 hours worked, or more, as required by applicable state or local law)
• Mental health and wellness support
• Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage
• Annual learning and development stipend to fuel your professional growth
• Daily meals in our offices, and meal delivery credits as eligible
• Relocation support for eligible employees
• Additional taxable fringe benefits, such as charitable donation matching and wellness stipends, may also be provided.