OpenAI

Software Engineer, Foundations Retrieval

OpenAI • $130K — $180K *
San Francisco, CA 94112In-Person
Information Technology
Less than 5 years of experience
1 month ago
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 5-7 years of experience building distributed systems
  • Strong background in search, retrieval, or indexing systems
  • Familiarity with ML-powered or embedding-based systems
  • Expertise in performance optimization and production reliability
  • Ability to navigate across ML and system interfaces
  • Proficient in first-principles thinking for complex problems

Responsibilities

  • Build and scale retrieval infrastructure for indexing and query execution
  • Develop real-time systems for low-latency model interaction
  • Collaborate with research teams to implement embedding and retrieval techniques
  • Support diverse retrieval pipelines, including dense and sparse methods
  • Own and optimize system performance, reliability, and observability
  • Integrate retrieval capabilities across Pretraining, Inference, and Product teams
  • Contribute to model-system interfaces for agentic workflows

Benefits

  • Collaborative team environment focused on innovation
  • Opportunities to work on cutting-edge technology that impacts system performance
  • Direct involvement in scaling projects with high relevance to OpenAI products
  • Chance to partner with leading researchers in the field
Full Job Description
About the Role

We're looking for a Software Engineer focused on building and scaling retrieval systems. You'll work with a team of researchers and engineers to develop infrastructure that enables models to retrieve and act on the right information at the right time. This includes designing and operating indexing systems, retrieval pipelines, and serving layers.

This work supports retrieval across OpenAI products and research, with direct impact on system performance, reliability, and scale.

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 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.


You Might Thrive in This Role If You Have
  • Experience building and scaling distributed systems.
  • Background in search, retrieval, or indexing systems.
  • Familiarity with embedding-based or ML-powered systems.
  • Experience with performance optimization and production reliability.
  • Ability to work across ML and systems boundaries.
  • First-principles thinking in ambiguous problem spaces.

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
Information Technology
Founded
2015
* Ladders Estimates

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