Software Engineer, Cyber Safeguards

Preparedness - San Francisco

About the Team

Models are becoming increasingly capable—moving from tools that assist humans to agents that can plan, execute, and adapt in the real world. Mitigating the frontier risks resulting from these capabilities is paramount to OpenAI’s ability to continue deploying models safely.

The Preparedness team is dedicated to addressing these critical risks. Our work includes:

• Measurement. Monitoring and predicting the evolving capabilities of frontier AI systems.
• Mitigation. Keeping misalignment safeguards, alignment tools, and on track to adequately address extreme threats that might arise in the future.
• Coordination. Setting mitigation targets by maintaining OpenAI’s preparedness framework, and partnering with other staff to achieve these targets.

This is urgent, fast-paced work that has far-reaching implications for the company and for society.

About the Role

We’re looking for a very senior, independent Software Engineer to lead the technical work behind cyber safeguard infrastructure in Preparedness. You’ll bring production-grade engineering discipline to systems that support everything from cyber evaluations and safeguard research internally to enabling the safe deployment of capabilities externally, while working closely with researchers and security partners.

The right person can move comfortably from ambiguous research needs to robust, operable systems—and can drive the work across organizational boundaries with clear communication.

In this role, you’ll:

• Drive the technical direction and hands-on execution for cyber safeguard infrastructure.
• Establish production-quality reliability, observability, on-call, and SLA/SLO practices.
• Partner with teams across the company - securitys.
• Lead cross-functional technical work, create alignment, and unblock collaborators.
• Build reliable systems that support cyber evaluations and research workflows.
• Improve the scalability, usability, and operational safety of cyber safeguards.
• Mentor teammates and raise the engineering bar while remaining deeply hands-on.

You might thrive in this role if you have:

• Extensive experience owning large-scale production systems, including reliability, on-call, incident response, SLAs/SLOs, and operational excellence.
• Senior/staff-level technical leadership with a track record of driving ambiguous, cross-functional work, especially in cybersecurity.
• Strong hands-on software engineering and systems-design skills; you can go deep in the code and architecture, including systems where you are unfamiliar and quickly gain context to make meaningful changes while following existing patterns.
• Ability to collaborate closely with researchers and independently turn evolving research needs into robust infrastructure.
• Experience thinking and communicating about cyber capability, misuse risk, access patterns, safeguards, and deployment tradeoffs in high-stakes environments.
• Experience at a security company, supporting cyber evaluations, or building security/reliability infrastructure is a plus.
• Experience moving from strong engineering into research support is a plus; former engineering managers are welcome if they remain deeply technical and hands-on.

About OpenAI

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 the full spectrum of humanity.

We are an equal opportunity employeration, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable lawation technology systems and related data security obligations.

To notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant. No response will be provided to inquiries unrelated to job posting compliance.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities.

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.

Compensation

$230K – $325K + Offers Equity

The base pay offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factorsance-related bonus(es) for eligible employees, and the following benefits.

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance for you and your family, with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts
• Pre-tax accounts for Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and commuter expenses (parking and transit)
• 401(k) retirement plan with employer match
• Paid parental leave (up to 24 weeks for birth parents and 20 weeks for non-birthing parents), plus paid medical and caregiver leave (up to 8 weeks)
• Paid time off: flexible PTO for exempt employees and up to 15 days annually for non-exempt employees
• 13+ paid company holidays, and multiple paid coordinated company office closures throughout the year for focus and recharge, plus paid sick or safe time (1 hour per 30 hours worked, or more, as required by applicable state or local law)
• Mental health and wellness support
• Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage
• Annual learning and development stipend to fuel your professional growth
• Daily meals in our offices, and meal delivery credits as eligible
• Relocation support for eligible employees
• Additional taxable fringe benefits, such as charitable donation matching and wellness stipends, may also be provided.

More details about our benefits are available to candidates during the hiring process.

This role is at-will and OpenAI reserves the right to modify base pay and other compensation components at any time based on individual performance, team or company results, or market conditions.