---
title: 'Data Scientist, Core Experimentation at OpenAI'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/data-scientist-core-experimentation-openai-seattle-5t9qtdjga80w'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-17'
---

# Data Scientist, Core Experimentation at OpenAI

- **Company:** [OpenAI](https://feeny.ai/companies/openai)
- **Location:** Seattle, WA
- **Compensation:** $347k–$385k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-05-13
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-17
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/e90a44a7-fc2e-49bf-aec4-d43b9e3d8e92/application

**Skills:** Python, Spark, Statistical Inference, Causal Inference, Online Experimentation Methodology, Variance Reduction, CUPED, Sequential Testing, Heterogeneous Effects Modeling, Metric Design, Distributed Computing, Large-scale Product Experimentation, ML Experimentation, Ranking Systems, Marketplace Systems

> Lead the evolution of OpenAI’s core experimentation platform by improving statistical rigor, reliability, and practical usability. Design methodologies for online experimentation, build scalable systems in Python, and partner with engineering and product teams to ensure trustworthy experiment results.

## Job description

## About the Team

The Statsig team at[OpenAI](https://openai.com?utm_source=chatgpt.com) builds and operates the experimentation platform that powers product development, measurement, and decision-making across the company. We partner closely with product, engineering, and infrastructure teams to ensure experiments are trustworthy, statistically rigorous, and scalable to the needs of frontier AI products. Our mission is to help teams make better decisions through reliable experimentation. We care deeply about statistical correctness, pragmatic solutions, and building systems that researchers and engineers can trust at massive scale. The team operates at the intersection of experimentation methodology, data infrastructure, causal inference, and product analytics. We are looking for experienced experimentation experts who want to shape the future of experimentation in the AI era.

## About the Role

We are hiring a Staff-level Data Scientist to help lead the evolution of OpenAI’s core experimentation platform. This role is focused on improving the statistical rigor, reliability, and practical usability of experimentation across the company. You’ll work on some of the hardest problems in online experimentation: sample ratio mismatch detection, variance reduction, bias mitigation, metric design, triggered analysis, heterogeneous treatment effects, sequential testing, and experimentation in complex ML systems. You’ll also help translate advanced statistical concepts into pragmatic systems and product experiences that teams can actually use. This is a highly technical individual contributor role with significant influence across methodology, platform architecture, and experimentation best practices. The ideal candidate combines deep statistical expertise with strong systems intuition and hands-on experience building or operating experimentation platforms at scale. In this role, you will:

- Drive the statistical direction and technical strategy for OpenAI’s experimentation platform
- Design and improve experimentation methodologies used across product and research teams
- Build pragmatic solutions to real-world experimentation challenges, balancing rigor with operational simplicity
- Improve the reliability and trustworthiness of experiment results, including detection and prevention of bias, logging issues, and data quality failures
- Developscalable analytical systems and pipelines in Python and distributed compute environments
- Partner with engineers and product teams to improve experiment design, metric quality, and decision-making practices
- Lead investigations into complex experimentation anomalies and measurement failures
- Establish best practices for experimentation governance, interpretation, and statistical correctness
- Mentor other data scientists and raising the overall technical bar for experimentation and causal inference

You might thrive in this role if you have:

- Experience building, scaling, or operating experimentation platforms at a large technology company
- Deep expertise in statistics, causal inference, and online experimentation methodology
- Strong understanding of practical experimentation challenges in production systems
- Experience with areas such as variance reduction, CUPED, sequential testing, SRM detection, metric design, or heterogeneous effects
- Strong coding and systems skills in Python and large-scale data processing frameworks (e.g. Spark)
- Experience designing analytical data models and scalable experimentation pipelines
- Ability to communicate complex statistical concepts clearly to technical and non-technical audiences
- Track record of influencing technical strategy through hands-on technical leadership
- Experience in large-scale product experimentation, ML experimentation, ranking systems, marketplace systems, or similar high-scale experimentation domains is highly valued

Workplace & Location This role is based in Bellevue. We use a hybrid work model and value in-person collaboration for technical design, iteration, and cross-functional partnership. Compensation Range: $293K - $325K USD

## 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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