Software Engineer, Monetization Infrastructure (SF/Seattle)

About the TeamThe 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 RoleWe’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 systemsArchitect large-scale distributed systems that meet strict requirements for reliability, privacy, security, and performanceDevelop APIs, infrastructure services, and internal platforms that support ads creation, delivery, measurement, and optimizationWork closely with Product, Research, and Design to translate requirements into scalable technical solutionsDrive 0→1 infra development through rapid prototyping, experimentation, and iterative improvementsContribute to the long-term technical strategy and roadmap for the monetization infra stackEnsure high engineering rigor through excellent testing, documentation, observability, and operational best practicesBuild for safety, privacy, fairness, and policy alignment from first principlesCollaborate across engineering orgs to ensure the infra layer is flexible, performant, and resilientYou might thrive in this role if you:Have 10+ years of experience building and operating large-scale distributed systemsHave experience designing mission-critical systems with demanding reliability, performance, and correctness requirementsThink in systems—architecture, data flows, operational concerns, observability, and long-term maintainabilityAre comfortable defining technical direction in ambiguous 0→1 environmentsEnjoy working cross-functionally to shape product requirements and system capabilitiesCommunicate clearly, reason holistically, and make decisions grounded in user needs and long-term system healthBonus: Experience in ads systems, marketplaces, AI/ML infra, or other monetization-intensive domainsAbout OpenAIOpenAI 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 ... (truncated, view full listing at source)