Software Engineer, Build Systems / CI (AI)

TL;DR

Software Engineer, Build Systems / CI (Build Systems/CI): Building and operating foundational CI/CD and build infrastructure for ChatGPT and OpenAI's core services with an accent on Bazel scalability, developer productivity, and reliable feedback loops. Focus on reducing CI latency through affected-target detection, enhancing observability of failures, and integrating AI tools for agent-assisted debugging.

Location: San Francisco, New York City, or Seattle

Salary: $185K – $490K + Equity

Company

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity.

What you will do

• Design and operate CI infrastructure to provide engineers with fast, reliable feedback on every change.
• Optimize Bazel-based build and test workflows, focusing on dependency modeling, remote caching, and execution.
• Develop systems for affected-target detection and smarter scheduling to eliminate redundant CI work.
• Improve observability and debuggability of build failures to better distinguish regressions from infrastructure flakes.
• Implement AI-driven tools for failure explanation, fix suggestions, and automated debugging.
• Own the reliability of developer infrastructure, including participation in an on-call rotation.

Requirements

• 5+ years of software engineering experience, with a significant focus on developer infrastructure or tooling.
• Hands-on experience with Bazel, Buck, Pants, Gradle, or similar build systems.
• Experience building and operating CI systems at scale where velocity is materially affected by build/queue times.
• Proficiency in debugging distributed systems using metrics, logs, and structured data.
• Ability to communicate clearly and turn ambiguous productivity problems into technical plans.
• Must be based in San Francisco, New York City, or Seattle

Nice to have

• Experience applying AI to developer infrastructure.
• Proficiency with Buildkite, Python, FastAPI, Kubernetes, or Terraform.
• Knowledge of Postgres and Kafka for powering engineering platforms.

Culture & Benefits

• Work at the forefront of AI research and deployment on products like ChatGPT.
• Mission-driven culture focused on the safe development of AGI.
• Competitive compensation package including significant equity.
• Commitment to an inclusive environment that values diverse perspectives.