OpenAI

Software Engineer, Compute - Storage

OpenAI$130K — $180K *
Information Technology
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 5+ years of experience in building or operating distributed systems in production
  • Proven expertise in storage infrastructure, object stores, or distributed filesystems
  • Strong coding skills in Rust or another systems-oriented programming language
  • Hands-on experience with Kubernetes-based systems
  • Familiarity with infrastructure tools like Terraform and observability tools like Grafana

Responsibilities

  • Build and operate storage services for OpenAI's research infrastructure
  • Develop robust object storage systems for diverse environments
  • Implement systems for efficient cross-region data movement and recovery
  • Design effective lifecycle management for data availability and cost-efficiency
  • Enhance the federation layer for simplified backend unification
  • Drive improvements in performance and reliability of the storage platform
  • Collaborate with researchers and infrastructure teams to adapt to evolving workloads

Benefits

  • Work on cutting-edge technology influencing AI research
  • Be part of a dedicated team contributing to high-scale production
  • Opportunities for professional growth and development
  • Engagement with cross-functional teams and research projects
  • Hands-on experience with modern infrastructure technology
Full Job Description
About the Team

The Storage Infrastructure team builds and operates the storage foundation behind OpenAI's most demanding workloads. We work directly with research to design storage systems for rapidly evolving experiments, while also powering production at scale. We own the platform end to end: backend systems, user-facing services and APIs, and the control planes that manage how data is placed, moved, and retained over time.

Our stack spans cloud and in-house object stores across very different workload profiles, from GPU-attached systems to dedicated storage hardware. We also build the federation layer that unifies these backends behind a simple interface and routes each workload to the right storage solution.

About the Role

You will help build the storage platform that powers OpenAI's research and production systems. This is a hands-on infrastructure role for engineers who want to work on deeply technical systems at scale and own them in production.

You'll work across object storage, cross-region data movement, lifecycle management, and the federation layer that provides a unified interface across multiple backends. Much of our stack runs on Kubernetes, and we primarily build services in Rust.

In this role, you will:
  • Build and operate storage services that underpin OpenAI's research infrastructure
  • Develop object storage systems across cloud and in-house environments
  • Build systems for cross-region data movement, replication, and recovery
  • Design lifecycle management capabilities that keep data durable, available, and cost-effective
  • Evolve the federation layer that unifies multiple backend systems behind a simple interface
  • Improve performance, reliability, and operational excellence across the platform
  • Collaborate closely with researchers and infrastructure teams to support rapidly evolving workloads


You might thrive in this role if you:
  • Have experience building or operating distributed systems in production
  • Have worked on storage infrastructure, object stores, distributed filesystems, or other data-intensive backend systems
  • Enjoy owning infrastructure end to end, including debugging and long-term reliability improvements
  • Write strong production code, ideally in Rust or another systems-oriented language
  • Are comfortable working with Kubernetes-based systems
  • Have experience with tools such as Terraform, Grafana, or similar infrastructure and observability tooling


About OpenAI

OpenAI is an artificial intelligence research laboratory consisting of the for-profit corporation OpenAI LP and its parent company, the non-profit OpenAI Inc. The company was founded in 2015 by a group of technology leaders, including Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, and John Schulman. OpenAI's mission is to develop and promote friendly AI for the betterment of humanity. The company has developed a number of cutting-edge AI technologies, including GPT-3, a language processing system that can generate human-like text. OpenAI has received funding from a number of high-profile investors, including LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and venture capitalist Peter Thiel.
Learn more about OpenAI
Size
100 employees
Industry
Founded
2015

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