Full-Stack Software Engineer - Intelligence & Investigations

About the Team

The Intelligence & Investigations team helps OpenAI understand and respond to the risks that can accompany increasingly capable AI. Our work has two central responsibilities: investigating potential high-severity misuse or harm involving our models, and monitoring and characterizing risks to OpenAI, our users, and the broader world. We bring together analysts, investigators, engineers, and other subject matter experts to turn complex signals into a clearer picture of what matters and support informed action.

About the Role

As an engineer on Intelligence & Investigations Engineering, you will build the systems that support both sides of this mission: giving OpenAI’s leadership superhuman situational awareness of important risks and developments, and accelerating expert investigators and analysts as they assess potential high-severity misuse or harm.

You will design, prototype, ship, and maintain end-to-end products that use OpenAI’s models and infrastructure to make sense of large, complex information environments. These systems will surface meaningful signals, synthesize important developments, and help people make well-informed decisions when the stakes are high.

You will work directly with analysts, investigators, and other subject matter experts to understand their needs and build products that make their work faster, more effective, and more scalable. Your engineering work will be central to how the team investigates potential misuse, develops situational awareness, and informs decisions.

We’re looking for engineers who combine strong technical and analytical skills with product judgment and the ability to move between rapid prototyping and reliable production systems. You should be comfortable working with ambiguous problems, complex data, and evolving AI capabilities—and excited to build tools that expand what human experts can understand and accomplish.

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:

• 7+ years of experience as a software engineer

• Build intelligence systems that monitor and characterize emerging risks, synthesize internal and external signals, and give OpenAI leadership a timely, decision-ready view of what matters

• Develop investigative tools that help analysts, investigators, and subject matter experts assess potential high-severity misuse or harm with greater speed, depth, and consistency

• Own technical solutions end to end, from identifying user needs and prototyping new capabilities to deploying, maintaining, and improving production systems

• Apply OpenAI’s models to research and investigative workflows, including lead generation, triage, synthesis, and analysis across large, complex datasets

• Design effective interfaces and workflows that help expert users explore evidence, follow leads, and make well-informed decisions

• Shape the team’s technical and product direction as model capabilities, risk landscapes, and investigative needs evolve

• Collaborate closely with analysts and investigators, as well as partners across Applied, Safety Systems, Research, User Operations, and Strategy

You might thrive in this role if you have / are:

• 4+ years of experience as a software engineer

• Experience designing, building, and operating production software, ideally for intelligence, investigations, security, research, or other complex analytical workflows.

• A track record of owning products or systems end to end and translating ambiguous, high-stakes problems into useful tools.

• Strong programming and data skills, including experience working with Python, SQL, and large or unstructured datasets.

• Sound product and technical judgment, with the ability to partner closely with expert users and work effectively across functions.

• Excitement about using increasingly capable AI systems to expand human situational awareness and accelerate expert investigation.

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, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

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