About the TeamThe Privacy Engineering team builds the systems and technical foundations that govern how user data is understood, retained, accessed, and used across OpenAI. We partner with Product, Data, Infrastructure, Security, and Legal to translate policy and trust commitments into durable architecture and enforceable controls.
Our work spans data inventory and mapping, classification and lineage, retention and deletion, access governance, purpose and usage controls, auditability, and lifecycle automation. We aim to make policy-aligned data handling the default while giving teams clear, reliable primitives for building and operating products at scale.
About the RoleWe are looking for an experienced Software Engineer to drive the architecture and execution of user data governance across OpenAI. You will define technical direction, build shared platforms and controls, and lead cross-functional programs that make data flows discoverable, policies enforceable, and ownership explicit. This role is well suited to a senior engineer who can move between deep systems design and organization-wide influence, turn ambiguous requirements into pragmatic roadmaps, and operate high-trust systems end to end.
This position is based in San Francisco. Relocation assistance is available.
In this role, you will:- Set the technical strategy and architecture for user data governance across data mapping, classification, lineage, retention, deletion, access, and permitted usage.
- Design and build shared services, APIs, metadata systems, and policy-enforcement mechanisms that make governance controls consistent, scalable, and auditable.
- Establish reliable inventories of user data, system ownership, data flows, and policy applicability across products, infrastructure, analytics, and research systems.
- Partner with Product, Data, Infrastructure, Security, and Legal leaders to define decision rights, translate requirements into controls, and drive adoption across teams.
- Own governance systems in production through measurable controls, observability, migrations, exception handling, incident response, and continuous improvement.
You might thrive in this role if you:- Have substantial experience designing and operating large-scale data platforms, privacy infrastructure, or governance systems in complex production environments.
- Have led architecture and multi-team execution for one or more data-governance domains, such as metadata and lineage, retention and deletion, access governance, or data-use controls.
- Can translate ambiguous policy, legal, security, and product requirements into clear system boundaries, technical standards, phased roadmaps, and measurable outcomes.
- Influence senior stakeholders and engineering teams without relying on formal authority, communicate tradeoffs clearly, and build durable cross-functional alignment.
- Take end-to-end ownership of high-trust systems, including correctness, scalability, auditability, operational resilience, and the developer and operator experience.
