5+ years of industry experience in software, security, or privacy engineering, especially with privacy features.
Fluency in at least one major programming language (e.g., Python, Go, Rust, C++, Java).
Deep understanding of privacy technologies and principles including data anonymization, encryption, or differential privacy.
Experience with scalable infrastructure and controls within distributed systems or ML pipelines.
Familiarity with global privacy regulations such as GDPR and CCPA and their technical impacts.
Strong collaboration and influence skills across legal, compliance, product, and engineering teams.
Practical approach to balancing privacy protections with product needs.
Responsibilities
Architect and implement privacy-preserving systems within data collection and access layers.
Develop and apply privacy engineering frameworks to production services.
Build and scale privacy controls like role-based access and audit logging.
Partner with teams to integrate privacy requirements into system designs from inception.
Collaborate with legal and compliance teams to create technical controls for regulatory obligations.
Conduct privacy risk assessments and mitigate risks through design or monitoring changes.
Mentor engineers to elevate privacy as a core discipline across the organization.
Benefits
Hybrid work model with 3 days in the office each week.
Relocation assistance for new employees.
Full Job Description
We're looking for a Software Engineer to architect and build backend systems that enforce data privacy and automate compliance at scale. You'll work closely with product, infrastructure, security, and legal teams to embed privacy-by-design into our data and access layers.
This is a hands-on, high-impact role for an experienced engineer who is passionate about protecting user data while enabling innovation.
What You'll Do
Design, build, and operate backend services that enforce policy-driven data access, lifecycle controls, and privacy protections.
Develop distributed authorization and identity-aware enforcement mechanisms integrated directly into data services and control planes.
Implement auditability, policy hooks, and enforcement observability to ensure compliance is continuously verifiable.
Partner with Security, Legal, and Compliance to convert privacy requirements into scalable technical designs and developer-friendly APIs.
Harden data platforms and backend services through schema-level controls and data handling constraints by default.
Collaborate with infrastructure teams to ensure consistent enforcement across systems while minimizing duplicated implementations.
Contribute patterns, libraries, and education that elevate trustworthy data access patterns across the organization.
You Might Thrive in This Role If You Have
5+ years of industry experience building and operating backend or infrastructure systems in production.
Strong software engineering fundamentals, with fluency in at least one major programming language (e.g., Python, Go, Rust, C++, Java).
Experience with distributed authorization, RBAC/ACL systems, encryption-based access, or policy engines.
Familiarity with global privacy regulations and their architectural implications.
Ability to influence and collaborate with teams across legal, compliance, product, and engineering.
A bias toward practical, impactful solutions that balance privacy protections with product needs.
Nice to Have
Experience with cloud platforms (e.g., Azure, AWS, GCP) and large-scale data systems.
Background in security engineering, privacy engineering, or data governance.
Experience with control-plane or metadata-driven enforcement systems.
Exposure to data platforms or ML infrastructure.
Prior experience in a regulated or highly sensitive data environment.
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.
