---
title: 'Backend Software Engineer (Evals) at OpenAI'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/backend-software-engineer-evals-openai-san-francisco-2kd70a4y3kbx'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-10'
---

# Backend Software Engineer (Evals) at OpenAI

- **Company:** [OpenAI](https://feeny.ai/companies/openai)
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Compensation:** $266k–$445k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Posted:** 2025-12-23
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-10
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/3d064454-c0c3-4225-bc2c-6d8c0f8735b2/application

**Skills:** Python, FastAPI, Postgres, Distributed Systems, API Design, Data Processing Pipelines, LLM Evaluation, Prompt Engineering, Model Monitoring

> Design and build eval infrastructure and backend services to measure the quality of OpenAI's support automation. Collaborate with Data Science and Research teams to create scalable systems for monitoring, evaluation, and knowledge creation workflows.

## Job description

## About the Team

The Support Automation team at OpenAI scales the organization by applying cutting-edge AI models to real-world challenges, automating and enhancing work across the organization. From customer operations to engineering, we develop an ecosystem of automation products that empower our colleagues and drive impact. We're passionate about crafting products that serve those around us, blending rapid prototyping with a focus on long-term quality and reliability. By creating reusable solutions, we create patterns that can be applied across diverse domains within OpenAI. TLDR: this team leverages OpenAI technology to improve OpenAI, and you’ll have the opportunity to leverage the full extent of our tech (both public and pre-released) to accomplish this mission.

## About the Role

We’re looking for a Backend Software Engineer with experience working in ML/LLM-heavy domains to help to design and build an evals infrastructure that measures the quality of OpenAI’s support automation. This is a deeply technical and highly cross-functional role where you’ll build robust systems and backend services that serve as the foundation for how knowledge is created, accessed, and applied across OpenAI. The role will especially focus on working closely with Data Science and Research partners to design and build evals at scale.

In this role, you will:

- Design eval pipelines that are reliable, reproducible, and extendable
- Build the infrastructure for continuous eval monitoring frameworks (regression/drift monitoring, building robust golden datasets) along with feedback loops that ultimately strengthen support automation
- Design, build, and maintain backend services and APIs to support intelligent automation and knowledge systems
- Integrate and structure data across internal platforms, transforming it into formats optimized for use by downstream systems and AI workflows.
- Collaborate closely with data, research, and engineering teams to integrate OpenAI models into high-leverage workflows
- Own the full development lifecycle of new backend systems and internal platform capabilities
- Build with scale and maintainability in mind, while rapidly iterating on new ideas

You might be a great fit if you have:

- 4+ years of backend engineering experience at product-driven companies (excluding internships)
- Proficiency in backend technologies. Our tech stack includes Python, FastAPI, and Postgres
- Experience designing and scaling distributed systems, APIs, or data processing pipelines
- Have experience building AI agents or applications, including designing evals and improving performance through prompting or scaffolding
- Are familiar with evaluation methods for LLMs and have worked with patterns like multi-agent workflows, tool use, or long context.
- Experience creating production evals and/or measuring performance of ML/LLM models at scale
- A pragmatic mindset. You’re comfortable shipping iteratively while building toward a long-term vision

## 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](https://cdn.openai.com/policies/eeo-policy-statement.pdf). 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. To notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant, please submit a report through [this form](https://form.asana.com/?d=57018692298241&k=5MqR40fZd7jlxVUh5J-UeA). No response will be provided to inquiries unrelated to job posting compliance. We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this [link](https://form.asana.com/?k=bQ7w9h3iexRlicUdWRiwvg&d=57018692298241). [OpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy](https://cdn.openai.com/policies/global-employee-and-contractor-privacy-policy.pdf) 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.

## About OpenAI

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company with a mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits all of humanity.
- **Entity Type**: Private – structured as a nonprofit parent (OpenAI Foundation) governing a for-profit public benefit corporation (OpenAI Group). The company has confidentially submitted a draft S-1 registration statement to the SEC, signaling a potential future IPO.
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, USA
- **Founded**: 2015
- **Founders**: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, John Schulman, Wojciech Zaremba, and others

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Artificial intelligence research and deployment
- **Target customers**: B2B (enterprises via API and platform), B2C (ChatGPT users), and developers (API, open-source models)
- **Mission**: To ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) – AI systems that are generally smarter than humans – benefits all of humanity.

## Products & Services
- **[ChatGPT](https://openai.com/chatgpt)**: Conversational AI assistant available via web and mobile, used by consumers and integrated into enterprise workflows.
- **[GPT-4 API](https://openai.com/product)**: Large language model accessed via API for developers to build AI-powered applications (text generation, summarization, code assistance, etc.).
- **[DALL-E](https://openai.com/dall-e-3)**: Image generation model that creates images from natural language descriptions.
- **[Whisper](https://openai.com/research/whisper)**: Open-source speech recognition system.
- **[OpenAI Agents](https://openai.com/)**: Emerging product category focused on autonomous AI agents that can perform tasks on behalf of users (announced June 2026).

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed in the provided sources. Widely reported in the press at ~$300 billion as of early 2026 (post-funding round), but this figure is not confirmed by OpenAI’s official materials.
- **Key Metric**: Total funding exceeds $13 billion from Microsoft and other investors. The company has also confidentially filed a draft S-1 with the SEC (see [openai.com](https://openai.com/) – “Confidential submission of draft S-1”).
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Microsoft (strategic partner and largest investor), with additional participation from Thrive Capital, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and others.
- **Growth Signals**: Active hiring with 721 open roles posted; expansion into agent-based products; confidential IPO filing; continued deployment of frontier models.

## Competitive Advantages
- **First-mover & brand recognition**: ChatGPT became the fastest-growing consumer app in history, establishing OpenAI as the household name in generative AI.
- **Research leadership**: Consistently publishes cutting-edge research (GPT-4, DALL-E 3, Whisper, etc.) and attracts top AI talent.
- **Compute & infrastructure**: Exclusive partnership with Microsoft provides massive cloud computing resources (Azure) for training and inference.
- **Unique governance structure**: The nonprofit parent ensures mission alignment (AGI benefiting humanity) while the for-profit arm can raise capital and scale products.

## Strategic Focus
- **Safe AGI development**: Continued emphasis on safety research, alignment, and responsible deployment (e.g., safety systems, model provenance).
- **Enterprise expansion**: Growing ChatGPT Enterprise and API offerings for businesses.
- **Agentic AI**: Building autonomous agents that can “transform work” (announced June 2026).
- **IPO preparation**: Confidential S-1 filing indicates intent to go public, which will require increased financial transparency and governance maturity.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture & values**: OpenAI’s stated values include “Humanity first,” “Act with humility,” “Feel the AGI,” and “Ship joy.” Operating principles emphasize agency, creativity, rapid iteration, and intense focus.
- **Benefits**: Competitive health insurance, mental healthcare support, 24-week paid birth-parent leave (plus 20 weeks for other parents), generous PTO, annual learning & development stipend, daily meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner), and a domestic conference budget.
- **Work environment**: Hybrid/office-based (San Francisco headquarters). The company offers a residency program for researchers and engineers transitioning into AI.
- **Impact**: Employees work directly on frontier AI models that shape the industry and society. The mission-driven nature attracts talent passionate about AGI’s societal implications.

## Sources
1. [OpenAI About Page](https://openai.com/about/)
2. [OpenAI Careers Page](https://openai.com/careers/)
3. [OpenAI Job Search](https://openai.com/careers/search)
4. [OpenAI Homepage](https://openai.com/)

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