Software Engineer, Monetization Infrastructure · OpenAI

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 18:25:22 GMT
Engineering

OpenAI · San Francisco · $230K – $385K • Offers Equity · onsite

Software Engineer, Monetization Infrastructure (SF/Seattle)

Location

San Francisco

Employment Type

Full time

Department

Applied AI

Compensation

$230K – $385K • Offers Equity

The base pay offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factors, including market location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. If the role is non-exempt, overtime pay will be provided consistent with applicable laws. In addition to the salary range listed above, total compensation also includes generous equity, performance-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.

About the Team

The Monetization team is a new cross-functional group working across engineering, product, research, and design to build the foundational systems that will help OpenAI scale access to intelligence responsibly. Our mission is to develop user-first, privacy-preserving monetization products—including next-generation ads experiences—that strengthen user trust, unlock economic opportunity, and support OpenAI’s long-term innovation.

Monetization plays a critical role in enabling OpenAI to continue pushing the boundaries of AI capabilities while ensuring the benefits of AGI are broadly shared. We believe monetization must be aligned with user value, uphold rigorous privacy and safety standards, and sustain a healthy ecosystem of developers and businesses.

This team operates in a greenfield environment and moves quickly through prototyping, experimentation, and iterative deployment. We partner closely with Product, Design, and Research to bring research breakthroughs into real-world systems at global scale.

About the Role

We’re looking for an experienced Software Engineer to help build the core infrastructure behind OpenAI’s monetization and ads systems. In this foundational role, you’ll architect and implement distributed systems that power OpenAI’s monetization stack—focusing on reliability, performance, privacy, and large-scale operation.

You’ll work across backend, systems, and platform layers to define and implement 0→1 infrastructure, partnering closely with Product, Design, and Research to shape the future of monetized AI experiences. Your work will enable both internal and external teams to build on safe, scalable, and robust monetization primitives.

This role is exclusively based across our San Francisco & Seattles sites. We offer relocation assistance to new employees.

In this role, you will:

Design and build the foundational backend and infrastructure powering OpenAI’s monetization and ads systems

Architect large-scale distributed systems that meet strict requirements for reliability, privacy, security, and performance

Develop APIs, infrastructure services, and internal platforms that support ads creation, delivery, measurement, and optimization

Work closely with Product, Research, and Design to translate requirements into scalable technical solutions

Drive 0→1 infra development through rapid prototyping, experimentation, and iterative improvements

Contribute to the long-term technical strategy and roadmap for the monetization infra stack

Ensure high engineering rigor through excellent testing, documentation, observability, and operational best practices

Build for safety, privacy, fairness, and policy alignment from first principles

Collaborate across engineering orgs to ensure the infra layer is flexible, performant, and resilient

You might thrive in this role if you:

Have 10+ years of experience building and operating large-scale distributed systems

Have experience designing mission-critical systems with demanding reliability, performance, and correctness requirements

Think in systems—architecture, data flows, operational concerns, observability, and long-term maintainability

Are comfortable defining technical direction in ambiguous 0→1 environments

Enjoy working cross-functionally to shape product requirements and system capabilities

Communicate clearly, reason holistically, and make decisions grounded in user needs and long-term system health

Bonus: Experience in ads systems, marketplaces, AI/ML infra, or other monetization-intensive domains

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 research and collaboration.