Research Engineer, AI for Science

About the Team

OpenAI for Science is building the next great scientific instrument: an AI-powered platform that accelerates scientific discovery. We aim to prove that OpenAI’s frontier models can do real science—and help researchers everywhere do more, faster.

About the Role

As a Research Engineer, you will build AI systems that enable previously impossible capabilities or achieve unprecedented levels of performance. You’ll work at the intersection of engineering and research, designing, implementing, and improving large-scale machine learning systems while contributing to the science behind the algorithms themselves.

We’re looking for people with strong engineering fundamentals who enjoy writing high-quality ML code, are comfortable working at massive scale, and are excited about OpenAI’s approach to research. As deep learning systems continue to scale, engineering excellence will play a critical role in driving the next major advances in AI.

This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.

In this role, you will:

• Design, implement, and improve large-scale distributed machine learning systems

• Write robust, high-quality machine learning code and contribute to performance-critical components

• Collaborate closely with researchers to translate ideas into scalable, production-ready systems

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Have strong programming skills and enjoy building reliable, high-performance systems

• Are comfortable working in large distributed systems and at significant computational scale

• Are excited about OpenAI’s research direction and motivated by the real-world impact of AI

• Nice to have:

  • Interest in using AI to accelerate scientific discovery, improve experimental design, or enable new forms of scientific insight

  • Experience building high-performance implementations of deep learning algorithms

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, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity. 

We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.

Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confiden