OpenAI

Staff / Senior Staff Backend Software Engineer, Workspace Agents

OpenAI$150K — $200K *
Information Technology
5 - 7 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 7+ years of backend engineering experience in product-driven or enterprise environments
  • Proficient in languages like Python, Go, or Rust; knowledge of distributed systems
  • Strong fundamentals in service architecture, APIs, data modeling, and reliability
  • Experience building scalable systems serving complex workflows and enterprise customers
  • Comfortable in fast-paced, ambiguous settings with evolving requirements
  • Ability to balance immediate product needs with long-term system quality
  • Interest in AI agents and enhancing workplace productivity

Responsibilities

  • Design, build, and operate backend systems for Workspace Agents in ChatGPT
  • Develop infrastructure to enhance agent reliability, configurability, and effectiveness
  • Create systems that connect agent experiences to enterprise tools and workflows
  • Address technical challenges in agent orchestration and backend integrations
  • Collaborate with product, design, and engineering to transform insights into scalable features
  • Influence the technical direction of a key product area in OpenAI's enterprise strategy
  • Exercise high ownership in an agile team with shifting priorities

Benefits

  • Collaborative and innovative team environment
  • Opportunities for significant technical ownership
  • Connection to cutting-edge AI technologies
  • Fast-paced work with evolving challenges
  • Focus on meaningful end-to-end outcomes
Full Job Description
About the Team

The Workspace Agents team builds the product and platform foundations that bring powerful, reliable agents into ChatGPT workspaces. The team recently launched Workspace Agents in ChatGPT, enabling organizations to create agents tailored to their workflows and make them available directly within ChatGPT for employees to use across day-to-day work.

Our work sits at the intersection of agentic product development, enterprise workflows, and backend infrastructure. We build the systems that help agents operate effectively in real business environments - grounding them in organizational context, connecting them to workplace tools and processes, and making them scalable, trustworthy, and useful across entire companies.

The team partners closely across product, design, research, and engineering to turn rapidly evolving model capabilities into durable enterprise experiences. We move quickly, stay close to customer needs, and take broad ownership of an emerging product area that will shape how organizations use AI agents at work.

April 2026 launch: Introducing workspace agents in ChatGPT

About the Role

We're looking for backend engineers to help build the systems behind Workspace Agents and scale them for use across businesses. This role is ideal for someone who enjoys working on product-critical backend infrastructure in an ambiguous, fast-moving environment where both the technical architecture and customer experience are still evolving.

You'll help design and build the backend foundations that make agents configurable, reliable, and production-ready within enterprise workspaces. Strong candidates will bring deep backend engineering ability, strong product judgment, and the versatility to work across distributed systems, agent platform primitives, and enterprise product requirements.

In this role, you will:
  • Design, build, and operate backend systems that power Workspace Agents in ChatGPT and support adoption across organizations
  • Develop core infrastructure that helps agents become more reliable, configurable, extensible, and effective in real workplace environments
  • Build systems that connect agentic experiences to enterprise context, workflows, and tools while maintaining strong product quality and operational trust
  • Work across technical challenges spanning agent orchestration, backend APIs, enterprise integrations, workspace-scale systems, and product foundations
  • Partner closely with product, design, research, and engineering stakeholders to translate fast-moving model and customer insights into scalable product capabilities
  • Help shape the technical direction of a high-priority, rapidly evolving product area at the center of OpenAI's enterprise product strategy
  • Operate with high ownership in a small, execution-oriented team where priorities may shift quickly and engineers are expected to drive meaningful end-to-end outcomes

Your background might look something like:
  • 7+ years of professional backend engineering experience, ideally in product-driven, infrastructure-heavy, or enterprise-oriented environments
  • Proficient in one or more backend languages (e.g., Python, Go, Rust, or similar) and distributed systems concepts.
  • Strong backend engineering fundamentals, including distributed systems, service architecture, APIs, data modeling, reliability, performance, and production operations
  • Experience building scalable product systems that serve complex workflows, multi-user environments, or enterprise customers
  • Comfort operating in ambiguous, fast-moving settings where requirements evolve quickly and technical ownership is broad
  • Ability to move quickly, make pragmatic tradeoffs, and balance near-term product iteration with long-term system quality
  • High agency, strong execution velocity, and a willingness to work across boundaries as the team defines and scales a new product area
  • Experience with enterprise software, workflow automation, platform products, integrations, or trust-sensitive systems is a plus
  • Interest in AI agents, workplace productivity, and building the backend systems that help organizations adopt and benefit from frontier model capabilities

Title note: At OpenAI, research and engineering hires share the internal title Member of Technical Staff. We use Staff / Senior Staff externally to signal the depth of experience, ownership, and technical leadership expected for this role.

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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