Software Engineer, Encryption

About the Team

The Encryption team at OpenAI works across product, engineering, security, and safety to build advanced privacy products and infrastructure. Our mission is to provide world-class security features to users, ensuring their private data remains private, even from OpenAI. We leverage technologies like client-side encryption, hardware security modules (HSMs), and trusted execution environments (TEEs), designing modern crypto, storage, and authentication protocols to ship product features across ChatGPT and our future consumer devices.

About the Role

We are seeking Software Engineers to design, build, and scale novel privacy features and infrastructure for ChatGPT and future consumer devices. As a Software Engineer, Encryption, you will be instrumental in safeguarding user data.

In This Role, You Will

• Ship fast while balancing difficult trade-offs in complex domains.
• Build core abstractions for encrypted storage, sync, and recovery, especially when paired with inference in trusted execution environments.
• Build product features for authentication, encryption, and storage across ChatGPT and future consumer devices.
• Build and maintain infrastructure for hardware security modules (HSMs).
• Integrate with private inference and computing infrastructure.
• Operate systems at scale with high reliability, including an on-call rotation.
• Collaborate with a diverse set of cross-functional teams across product, engineering, security, safety, policy, and legal.

You Might Thrive In This Role If You

• Care deeply about user privacy and security.
• Have 5+ years of experience in professional software engineering.
• Have experience designing end-to-end encryption protocols (e.g., Labyrinth).
• Have experience building intuitive authentication experiences for users.
• Have experience building and scaling HSM infrastructure under strict security requirements (e.g., Juicebox).
• Take pride in building and operating scalable, reliable, secure systems.
• Can collaborate well and drive alignment in the face of difficult trade-offs.
• Are comfortable with ambiguity and rapid change.

Workplace & Location

This role may be based in San Francisco, CA or remotely in the US with occasional travel to our HQ. OpenAI uses a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offers relocation assistance to 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 AI systems' capabilities and 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.

Key skills/competency

• Encryption
• Client-side Encryption
• Hardware Security Modules (HSM)
• Trusted Execution Environments (TEE)
• Cryptographic Protocols
• Data Privacy
• Security Engineering
• Authentication Systems
• Scalable Systems Design
• Distributed Systems