--- title: 'IT Controls Data Engineer at OpenAI' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/it-controls-data-engineer-openai-san-francisco-rcj7naz4kekt' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-09-10' --- # IT Controls Data Engineer at OpenAI - **Company:** [OpenAI](https://feeny.ai/companies/openai) - **Location:** San Francisco, CA - **Compensation:** $293k–$325k - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** hybrid - **Posted:** 2026-05-29 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-10 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/5bc79fde-2f1d-4bb2-8186-4a700ecff37c/application **Skills:** SQL, Python, Data Engineering, Analytics Engineering, Data Modeling, Data Lineage, Data Validation, Dashboarding, Automated Reporting, Entra ID, Workday, GitHub, Databricks, Salesforce, Azure, AWS, GCP > Build data infrastructure and pipelines to power audit readiness, IT controls, and continuous control monitoring. Design automated evidence generation workflows and validation logic to make security and IT controls measurable and defensible for stakeholders. ## Job description ## About the Team The IT and Security organization builds the systems, data foundations, and automation that help OpenAI operate securely and reliably at scale. We support critical domains across identity, access, infrastructure security, enterprise systems, and internal productivity. As OpenAI grows, audit readiness and control assurance increasingly depend on reliable data: accurate system inventories, access populations, change records, configuration state, exception signals, and evidence generated directly from source systems. Our goal is to move beyond manual evidence collection and build scalable data products, automated validation, and continuous control monitoring that make security and IT controls measurable, repeatable, and defensible. ## About the Role We are looking for an IT Controls Data Engineer to build the data infrastructure that powers audit readiness, IT controls, evidence automation, and continuous control monitoring. In this role, you will design and maintain the pipelines, datasets, models, validation logic, dashboards, and evidence exports that make IT controls measurable, repeatable, and defensible. You will work across Security, IT, Infrastructure, Engineering, Finance Risk Management, and auditors to turn complex system behavior into reliable control data products. This is a technical builder role. The ideal candidate is strong in data engineering and analytics engineering, comfortable working with enterprise and security system data, and able to explain data lineage, source-system behavior, and control logic clearly to technical and audit stakeholders. You’ll be responsible for - Building reliable data pipelines, models, and datasets for IT controls, including access, identity, configuration, change, ticketing, exception, and evidence data. - Creating data quality, lineage, reconciliation, and completeness checks that make control data defensible for SOX and other audit use cases. - Designing automated evidence generation workflows that produce complete, accurate, and repeatable audit populations, exports, dashboards, and control artifacts. - Developing control monitoring logic to detect drift, missing evidence, stale access, direct system changes, overdue activity, and other control exceptions. - Partnering with Security, IT, Infrastructure, Engineering, Risk Management, and system owners to understand source systems, validate data, and improve automation reliability. - Translating technical system behavior, data flows, access models, and validation results into clear explanations for auditors, control owners, and technical stakeholders. We’re looking for someone with - Strong data engineering, analytics engineering, or software/data systems experience, including building reliable datasets, pipelines, queries, dashboards, or automated reporting workflows. - Hands-on SQL experience and proficiency with at least one scripting or programming language such as Python. - Experience working with enterprise system data, such as identity platforms, HR systems, ticketing systems, cloud environments, source control systems, SaaS applications, or audit/compliance tooling. - Strong understanding of data modeling, lineage, completeness, accuracy, reconciliation, validation, observability, and repeatability. - Ability to reason through messy source-system data, inconsistent identifiers, nested groups, stale records, missing owners, direct assignments, and downstream application drift. - Experience supporting security, IT controls, SOX, audit readiness, risk, compliance, or regulated technology environments. - Ability to explain technical systems, data flows, and control logic clearly to both engineering and audit stakeholders. - Strong ownership, judgment, and attention to detail in high-stakes, time-sensitive environments. Nice to have: - Experience with Entra ID, Workday, GitHub, Databricks, Salesforce, or similar platforms. - Experience with cloud infrastructure environments such as Azure, AWS, or GCP. You might thrive in this role if: - You like turning messy operational processes into clean, repeatable systems. - You enjoy working at the intersection of data, controls, engineering, and audit. - You can go deep technically, but also explain your work clearly to auditors and executives. - You care about evidence quality, data integrity, and defensible documentation. - You are energized by building automation that reduces manual effort and improves control reliability. - You can partner with engineers without slowing them down, while still maintaining a strong control standard. ## 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/) ## Other roles at OpenAI - [Account Director, Digital Natives](https://feeny.ai/job/account-director-digital-natives-openai-delhi-w85camznm9da) — Delhi, India - [Product Designer, Youth](https://feeny.ai/job/product-designer-youth-openai-san-francisco-y2ejwx2gxsn1) — San Francisco, CA - [Senior Manager, EHS - Robotics](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-manager-ehs-robotics-openai-san-francisco-562ppxrm3e6n) — San Francisco, CA - [Hardware Strategic Sourcing Manager, Optics](https://feeny.ai/job/hardware-strategic-sourcing-manager-optics-openai-san-francisco-vrghp3x83twa) — San Francisco, CA - [Research Program Manager, Governance](https://feeny.ai/job/research-program-manager-governance-openai-san-francisco-t9jpag8tgexs) — San Francisco, CA - [Partnerships Operations Lead, OAI for Government](https://feeny.ai/job/partnerships-operations-lead-oai-for-government-openai-washington-vzejrcam99mr) — Washington, DC - [Technical Program Manager, Manufacturing Operations](https://feeny.ai/job/technical-program-manager-manufacturing-operations-openai-singapore-2px9t2t2dyvy) — Singapore - [Creative Director, Copy](https://feeny.ai/job/creative-director-copy-openai-new-york-jd7jgsad5xr4) — New York, NY - [Engineering Manager, ChatGPT Search Infrastructure](https://feeny.ai/job/engineering-manager-chatgpt-search-infrastructure-openai-san-francisco-hh32vszf6wmn) — San Francisco, CA - [Physical Design Engineer, Forward Deployed Engineering](https://feeny.ai/job/physical-design-engineer-forward-deployed-engineering-openai-san-francisco-qqh4c31zzvj5) — San Francisco, CA