Research Scientist, PhD · OpenAI

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 18:40:32 GMT
Engineering

OpenAI · San Francisco · $250K – $380K • Offers Equity · hybrid

Location

San Francisco

Employment Type

Full time

Department

Research

Compensation

$250K – $380K • 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 Research team at OpenAI advances the frontier of artificial intelligence by developing new models, algorithms, and learning paradigms that push toward safe and beneficial AGI. Our researchers work across a wide range of domains including multimodal learning, reasoning, robotics, alignment, and large-scale foundation models, collaborating closely with engineering and product teams to translate research breakthroughs into real-world impact.

About the Role

As a Research Scientist at OpenAI, you will develop novel machine learning methods and contribute to advancing the research agenda of the team you join. You will work on discovering simple, scalable, and generalizable ideas that improve model capabilities and help shape a unified long-term research vision across the organization.

We’re looking for people who are excited to pursue ambitious research problems, operate independently, and collaborate deeply with interdisciplinary teams to bring cutting-edge ideas from concept to impactful systems.

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:

Conduct original research to advance the state of the art in machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Design, implement, and evaluate novel algorithms, models, or training approaches at large scale.

Collaborate with researchers and engineers to translate research insights into production systems and real-world applications.

You might thrive in this role if you:

Are pursuing or have recently completed a PhD in Machine Learning, Computer Science, Robotics, or a related technical field.

Have demonstrated research impact through first-author publications, open-source projects, or significant technical contributions.

Can independently define and execute on a research agenda, identifying impactful problems and driving long-term projects forward.

Are motivated by OpenAI’s mission and excited to work on research that contributes toward beneficial AGI.

Nice to have:

Interest in the societal impacts and responsible deployment of AI systems.

Experience building high-performance or large-scale implementations of deep learning systems.

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.