Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. They are seeking a Principal Software Engineer to design and scale the systems that power their developer and enterprise-facing products, leading the architecture of backend services and platform capabilities.
Responsibilities
- Design, build, and scale the backend services, APIs, and infrastructure that power OpenAI’s developer and enterprise products
- Lead the architecture of distributed systems, databases, and data pipelines that support large-scale, high-reliability production workloads
- Own major platform capabilities end-to-end, from early technical strategy and design through implementation, launch, and long-term operation
- Shape the design of our APIs with care and intentionality, treating API interfaces as core product surfaces and driving a high-quality developer experience
- Build secure, reliable, and compliant systems that meet the needs of both enterprise and developer use cases
- Partner closely with product, research, design, infrastructure, and forward-deployed engineering teams to bring new capabilities into production
- Drive technical direction across complex problem spaces, making sound architectural tradeoffs that balance speed, quality, and long-term maintainability
- Improve engineering velocity by building internal tooling, platform abstractions, and systems that increase leverage across the broader organization
- Raise the bar for engineering quality, system design, operational excellence, and technical decision-making across teams
- Help identify and solve ambiguous, high-impact technical problems that cut across multiple systems and stakeholders
Skills
- Significant experience building, scaling, and evolving production backend systems in fast-moving environments
- Deep expertise in software engineering fundamentals, distributed systems, and API design
- Proficient in one or more backend languages such as Python, Go, Rust, or TypeScript
- Track record of leading complex technical initiatives and driving architecture across teams or critical product areas
- Care deeply about reliability, safety, security, and performance in production environments
- Strong product instincts and a high bar for developer experience and interface design
- Comfortable working in ambiguous, fast-moving environments and can create clarity where little exists
- Own problems end-to-end and are eager to learn whatever is needed to solve them
- Build thoughtfully, move with urgency, and collaborate effectively across disciplines
- Influence technical direction through strong judgment, clear communication, and consistently high-quality execution
- Experience as a founder or early engineer at a startup, or have built products and platforms from scratch
Company Overview
OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company that develops advanced AI models, including ChatGPT. It is a sub-organization of OpenAI Foundation. It was founded in 2015, and is headquartered in San Francisco, California, USA, with a workforce of 1001-5000 employees. Its website is https://www.openai.com.Company H1B Sponsorship
OpenAI has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships, with 57 in 2026, 103 in 2025, 74 in 2024, 15 in 2023, 18 in 2022, 10 in 2021, 6 in 2020. Please note that this does not guarantee sponsorship for this specific role.