Data Engineering Manager

About the Team

The Applied organization brings OpenAI's most advanced technology to the world through products like ChatGPT and through the APIs that power a growing ecosystem of developer and enterprise applications. Our teams enable people and businesses to harness the power of our models in transformative ways - from building entirely new products to reimagining how work gets done.

Data is at the heart of everything we do. The Data Engineering team builds and operates the foundational systems that power decision-making across OpenAI - including analytics, safety, growth, and model development. We ensure that these systems are scalable, secure, reliable, and trustworthy, and we partner closely with teams across the company to ensure data is used responsibly and to its fullest potential.

About the Role

We're looking for an experienced data engineering leader to scale a world-class Data Engineering team and drive the evolution of OpenAI's data infrastructure. In this role, you'll define and execute the data strategy for key product and business areas - including our core AI Platform, Codex, Search, and Financial Engineering - and ensure that the company's most critical data assets are high quality, trustworthy, and ready to power the next generation of products and insights.

This is a hands-on leadership role with significant impact across OpenAI. You will lead a team building the pipelines, models, and systems that underpin analytics, safety, business operations, and product development - and help define how we build and use data at scale.

In this role, you will :

Build, manage, and grow a diverse, high-performing Data Engineering team.

Define and deliver the data strategy for major product and business domains.

Guide data architecture and infrastructure decisions to ensure scalability, reliability, and trustworthiness.

Partner closely with teams across Product, Engineering, Data Science, Finance, and Research to understand data needs and deliver impactful solutions.

Develop robust, secure, and fault-tolerant systems for data ingestion, transformation, and delivery.

Champion data quality, governance, and privacy practices that uphold OpenAI's highest standards.

You might thrive in this role if you :

Have 10+ years of experience in data engineering, including significant leadership experience building and scaling high-performing teams.

Have successfully built or scaled modern data platforms and pipelines in high-growth, dynamic environments.

Are passionate about building trustworthy, secure, and operationally excellent data systems.

Are skilled at partnering across technical and non-technical teams to drive meaningful product and business outcomes.

Are comfortable leading through ambiguity and setting technical strategy in rapidly evolving environments.

Have strong technical expertise in one or more programming languages commonly used in data engineering (e.g., Python, Scala, Java).

This role is based in our San Francisco headquarters. We offer relocation assistance for new employees.

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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We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link.

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At 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.

Compensation Range : $405K - $490K