{"schemaVersion":"jobsearcher.job.v1","id":"9de2e55735210007cdf88e0c","url":"https://jobsearcher.com/jobs/9de2e55735210007cdf88e0c","canonicalUrl":"https://jobsearcher.com/jobs/9de2e55735210007cdf88e0c","title":"Software Engineer, Foundations Retrieval","description":"About the Team\n\nThe Foundations Research team works on high-risk, high-reward ideas that could shape the next decade of AI. Our goal is to advance the science and data that enable our training and scaling efforts, with a particular focus on future frontier models. Pushing the boundaries of data, scaling laws, optimization techniques, model architectures, and efficiency improvements to propel our science.\n\nThe Search team sits within Foundations, building agentic search by co-designing model–system interfaces with the core search stack (serving, indexing, retrieval) to translate model intent into reliable, real-world actions. Operating at the frontier of AI and information retrieval, the team develops large-scale systems that transform and index vast corpora, enabling models to reason over global knowledge and act dependably. In close partnership with researchers, we rapidly bring modeling breakthroughs into production and redefine how intelligent systems discover, retrieve, and synthesize information at planetary scale.\n\nAbout the Role\n\nWe’re looking for a Software Engineer focused on building and scaling retrieval systems. You’ll work with a team of researchers and engineers to develop infrastructure that enables models to retrieve and act on the right information at the right time. This includes designing and operating indexing systems, retrieval pipelines, and serving layers.\n\nThis work supports retrieval across OpenAI products and research, with direct impact on system performance, reliability, and scale.\n\nResponsibilities\n\nBuild and scale retrieval infrastructure across indexing, serving, and query execution.\n\nDevelop low-latency, high-throughput systems for real-time model interaction.\n\nPartner with research to productionize embedding and retrieval techniques.\n\nSupport dense, sparse, and hybrid retrieval pipelines.\n\nOwn system performance, reliability, and observability at scale.\n\nCollaborate across Pretraining, Inference, and Product teams to integrate retrieval end-to-end.\n\nContribute to model - system interfaces for agentic workflows.\n\nYou Might Thrive in This Role If You Have\n\nExperience building and scaling distributed systems.\n\nBackground in search, retrieval, or indexing systems.\n\nFamiliarity with embedding-based or ML-powered systems.\n\nExperience with performance optimization and production reliability.\n\nAbility to work across ML and systems boundaries.\n\nFirst-principles thinking in ambiguous problem spaces.\n\nAbout OpenAI\n\nOpenAI 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.\n\nWe 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.\n\nFor additional information, please see\n\nOpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement\n\n.\n\nBackground 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.\n\nTo notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant, please submit a report through\n\nthis form\n\n. No response will be provided to inquiries unrelated to job posting compliance.\n\nWe are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities.\n\nOpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy\n\nAt OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.\n\nCompensation\n\n$380K – $555K + Offers Equity","company":"OpenAI","rawCompany":"openai","city":"Millbrae","state":"CA","isRemote":false,"isActive":false,"createdAt":"2026-05-21T07:08:37.861Z","occupations":[{"code":"15-1252.00","title":"Software Developers","slug":"software-developers"},{"code":"15-1221.00","title":"Computer and Information Research Scientists","slug":"computer-and-information-research-scientists"},{"code":"15-1299.08","title":"Computer Systems Engineers/Architects","slug":"computer-systems-engineers-architects"}],"industries":[{"code":"513210","title":"Software Publishers","slug":"software-publishers"},{"code":"541511","title":"Custom Computer Programming Services","slug":"custom-computer-programming-services"},{"code":"541512","title":"Computer Systems Design Services","slug":"computer-systems-design-services"}],"jobPosting":{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"JobPosting","title":"Software Engineer, Foundations Retrieval","description":"About the Team\n\nThe Foundations Research team works on high-risk, high-reward ideas that could shape the next decade of AI. Our goal is to advance the science and data that enable our training and scaling efforts, with a particular focus on future frontier models. Pushing the boundaries of data, scaling laws, optimization techniques, model architectures, and efficiency improvements to propel our science.\n\nThe Search team sits within Foundations, building agentic search by co-designing model–system interfaces with the core search stack (serving, indexing, retrieval) to translate model intent into reliable, real-world actions. Operating at the frontier of AI and information retrieval, the team develops large-scale systems that transform and index vast corpora, enabling models to reason over global knowledge and act dependably. In close partnership with researchers, we rapidly bring modeling breakthroughs into production and redefine how intelligent systems discover, retrieve, and synthesize information at planetary scale.\n\nAbout the Role\n\nWe’re looking for a Software Engineer focused on building and scaling retrieval systems. You’ll work with a team of researchers and engineers to develop infrastructure that enables models to retrieve and act on the right information at the right time. This includes designing and operating indexing systems, retrieval pipelines, and serving layers.\n\nThis work supports retrieval across OpenAI products and research, with direct impact on system performance, reliability, and scale.\n\nResponsibilities\n\nBuild and scale retrieval infrastructure across indexing, serving, and query execution.\n\nDevelop low-latency, high-throughput systems for real-time model interaction.\n\nPartner with research to productionize embedding and retrieval techniques.\n\nSupport dense, sparse, and hybrid retrieval pipelines.\n\nOwn system performance, reliability, and observability at scale.\n\nCollaborate across Pretraining, Inference, and Product teams to integrate retrieval end-to-end.\n\nContribute to model - system interfaces for agentic workflows.\n\nYou Might Thrive in This Role If You Have\n\nExperience building and scaling distributed systems.\n\nBackground in search, retrieval, or indexing systems.\n\nFamiliarity with embedding-based or ML-powered systems.\n\nExperience with performance optimization and production reliability.\n\nAbility to work across ML and systems boundaries.\n\nFirst-principles thinking in ambiguous problem spaces.\n\nAbout OpenAI\n\nOpenAI 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.\n\nWe 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.\n\nFor additional information, please see\n\nOpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement\n\n.\n\nBackground 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.\n\nTo notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant, please submit a report through\n\nthis form\n\n. No response will be provided to inquiries unrelated to job posting compliance.\n\nWe are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities.\n\nOpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy\n\nAt OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.\n\nCompensation\n\n$380K – $555K + Offers Equity","datePosted":"2026-05-21T07:08:37.861Z","dateModified":"2026-05-21T07:08:37.861Z","hiringOrganization":{"@type":"Organization","name":"OpenAI","sameAs":"https://jobsearcher.com"},"jobLocation":{"@type":"Place","address":{"@type":"PostalAddress","addressLocality":"Millbrae","addressRegion":"CA","addressCountry":"US"}},"identifier":{"@type":"PropertyValue","name":"JobSearcher","value":"9de2e55735210007cdf88e0c"},"url":"https://jobsearcher.com/jobs/9de2e55735210007cdf88e0c"}}