--- title: 'Network Engineer at OpenAI' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/network-engineer-openai-san-francisco-bgcry5kkw70m' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-09-10' --- # Network Engineer at OpenAI - **Company:** [OpenAI](https://feeny.ai/companies/openai) - **Location:** San Francisco, CA - **Compensation:** $347k–$510k - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** hybrid - **Posted:** 2026-08-14 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-10 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/9f78c41f-8d39-46c9-b9c3-c3b075905b24 ## Job description ## About the Team OpenAI’s Network Engineering team within IT and Security advances the mission of deploying artificial general intelligence (AGI) for the benefit of all by delivering secure, scalable, and resilient network services. We build and operate the connectivity that supports OpenAI’s offices, labs, campuses, cloud environments, people, and devices. By combining strong network fundamentals with security, reliability, automation, and user-centered design, we enable impactful AI research, corporate operations, and product innovation. ## About the Role As a Network Engineer at OpenAI, you will design, operate, and continuously improve the global networks that connect our offices, labs, campuses, PoPs, cloud environments, people, and devices. The role spans strategic platform engineering and responsive production operations: you will shape architecture, standards, roadmaps, lifecycle plans, and automation while supporting incidents, escalations, and time-sensitive delivery. Operational signals will inform what we stabilize, simplify, standardize, or automate next. We work backward from user needs, investigate root causes, own outcomes end-to-end, and move quickly without compromising security. We are looking for a versatile engineer who can make pragmatic reliability and security tradeoffs, communicate clearly, and turn recurring operational work into durable platforms, tooling, and standards. You will partner across IT, Security, AppEng, Research, Applied, workplace teams, carriers, and vendors. In this role, you will: - Design, implement, and operate secure, scalable enterprise networks across offices, labs, campuses, PoPs, cloud connectivity, and hybrid environments. - Set strategic direction for network services through architecture, standards, roadmaps, lifecycle planning, capacity strategy, and measurable reliability outcomes. - Own production operations, including on-call, incident response, escalations, and time-sensitive delivery, while protecting user experience, security, and business continuity. - Use incident learning, problem management, ticket trends, and telemetry as roadmap inputs, eliminating recurring failure modes through automation, Infrastructure-as-Code, and safer operating standards. - Develop dashboards, telemetry, alerts, and health checks that provide actionable visibility into network performance and failure domains. - Implement and operate routing, switching, wireless, WAN, Internet edge, firewall, NAC, segmentation, and core network services. - Lead network changes, migrations, refreshes, site launches, and service improvements from design through validation and operational handoff. - Partner with security and identity teams to apply least privilege, Zero Trust principles, RBAC, device identity, and appropriate access controls. - Balance long-term platform improvements with urgent operational priorities through clear ownership, documented decisions, deliberate tradeoffs, and transparent communication. You may be a fit for this role if you have: - Hands-on experience designing and operating enterprise networks using platforms such as Cisco IOS, Cisco Meraki, Palo Alto, Arista, or equivalent technologies. - Strong routing and switching fundamentals, including BGP, OSPF, VLAN/VRF design, WAN, Internet edge, and high-availability patterns. - Production troubleshooting experience across packets, logs, telemetry, configurations, circuits, and physical infrastructure. - Experience with network observability using tools and protocols such as SNMP, syslog, NetFlow, packet capture, ELK, Grafana, or comparable platforms. - Strong network security fundamentals, including ACLs, firewalls, VPN, 802.1X/NAC, device profiling, segmentation, and least privilege. - Ability to automate infrastructure using a modern programming language and tools such as Python, Go, Terraform, Ansible, APIs, Git, and CI/CD. - Experience with enterprise wireless and at least one cloud or hybrid connectivity environment. - Clear communication, sound operational judgment, and the ability to own outcomes while partnering across technical and business teams You might thrive in this role if you have: - Experience shaping a multi-quarter network roadmap while supporting production operations and changing delivery needs. - Experience with optical transport and carrier services, including DWDM, wavelengths, dark fiber, DIA, or similar technologies. - Experience with cloud and virtual WAN architectures such as Azure Virtual WAN, AWS Transit Gateway, or comparable services. - Experience with campus, data center, colocation, or PoP architecture, interconnects, high-availability design, and operational handoff. - Experience building internal platforms, self-service workflows, or AI-assisted automation that measurably reduces operational toil. This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer 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 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. 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