Software Engineer, Backend (Cooperative AI)

The Cooperative AI team is scaling OpenAI with OpenAI. We are building a model powered knowledge system that evolves and learns as our products, systems and customers evolve. We leverage our state of the art models, technologies, and products (some external, some still in the lab) to assist or completely automate robust operations supporting both internal and external customers. We support OpenAI customers and internal partners globally, powering systems from customer support to integrity to product insights. We are a self-contained multi-disciplinary team, who enjoy a lightning fast feedback loop with customers at scale, some of whom sit just a few pods away. We iterate fast, and engineer for reliable long-term impact. We're constantly looking for the similarities and patterns in different types of work, and focus on building simple primitives, to apply world class knowledge to many domains., We're looking for a Backend Software Engineer to help architect and scale the infrastructure that powers our knowledge systems. This is a deeply technical and highly cross-functional role where you'll build robust systems and backend services that serve as the foundation for how knowledge is created, accessed, and applied across OpenAI.

In this role, you will:

• Design, build, and maintain backend services and APIs to support intelligent automation and knowledge systems
• Integrate and structure data across internal platforms, transforming it into formats optimized for use by downstream systems and AI workflows.
• Collaborate closely with product, research, and engineering teams to integrate OpenAI models into high-leverage workflows
• Own the full development lifecycle of new backend systems and internal platform capabilities
• Build with scale and maintainability in mind, while rapidly iterating on new ideas

• 4+ years of backend engineering experience at product-driven companies (excluding internships)
• Proficiency in backend technologies. Our tech stack includes Python, FastAPI, and Postgres
• Experience designing and scaling distributed systems, APIs, or data processing pipelines
• A pragmatic mindset. You're comfortable shipping iteratively while building toward a long-term vision
• An interest in structured knowledge representation, internal search, agent infrastructure, or systems that evolve over time Curiosity about AI/ML and excitement to work alongside world-class research and product teams (hands-on experience is a bonus, not a must)

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity., At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.