About the RoleWe're looking for a Staff+ Software Engineer to help build and evolve the identity infrastructure that supports OpenAI's research, engineering, and internal platforms.
This role sits at the intersection of cloud infrastructure, identity systems, and software engineering. You'll work across production systems, infrastructure-as-code, cloud control planes, identity providers, and operational infrastructure to build secure, scalable, and reliable systems used broadly across the company.
The ideal candidate has experience building and operating large-scale, mission-critical systems with strong reliability and security requirements, and is comfortable writing production code, designing distributed systems, and driving ambiguous projects from 0 to 1 while building the operational rigor needed to run critical infrastructure over time.
In this role, you will:- Lead the architecture, development, and operation of identity infrastructure that spans cloud platforms, internal systems, and critical engineering services.
- Design and evolve systems for authentication, authorization, access governance, auditability, and policy enforcement with a strong focus on reliability, scalability, and secure-by-default design.
- Build foundational infrastructure and platform capabilities that are broadly used across engineering, research, and security teams.
- Improve the reliability, observability, performance, and operational maturity of identity infrastructure that supports mission-critical systems and workflows.
- Lead ambiguous, high-impact technical initiatives across security, infrastructure, and engineering teams, driving alignment and execution across multiple stakeholders.
- Partner closely with engineers, researchers, and security teams to build scalable access patterns and infrastructure that enable rapid development while maintaining strong security boundaries and operational rigor.
- Raise the engineering bar through strong technical judgment, thoughtful system design, operational excellence, and long-term ownership of critical infrastructure.
You might thrive in this role if you have: - 10+ years building and operating large-scale infrastructure, platform, or backend systems.
- Deep experience with cloud infrastructure, identity systems, distributed systems, and infrastructure-as-code.
- Experience leading complex technical initiatives across teams and driving architecture in ambiguous environments.
- Experience building security-critical systems involving authentication, authorization, access governance, privileged access, or policy enforcement.
- Strong software engineering fundamentals with experience in Go, Rust, Python, or similar languages.
- Ability to debug across code, cloud infrastructure, identity systems, networking, and operations.
- High bar for reliability, security, auditability, and operational rigor in mission-critical systems.
This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We use a hybrid work model of three days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.
