---
title: 'Software Engineer, Scaled Abuse at OpenAI'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-scaled-abuse-openai-san-francisco-be5ffz3vxyjg'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-10'
---

# Software Engineer, Scaled Abuse at OpenAI

- **Company:** [OpenAI](https://feeny.ai/companies/openai)
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Compensation:** $266k–$445k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Posted:** 2026-06-08
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-10
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/3c67f712-697d-48d8-b05c-01be896e61da/application

**Skills:** Python, Postgres, Kafka, Kubernetes, Terraform, Azure, Backend engineering, Data systems, Machine Learning

> Design and build backend and data systems for real-time fraud detection and remediation at scale. Partner with Trust & Safety and Security teams to combat abusive behavior while balancing system resilience and user experience.

## Job description

## About the team

The Applied team safely brings OpenAI's technology to the world. We released ChatGPT; Plugins; DALL·E; and the APIs for GPT-5, embeddings, and fine-tuning. We also operate inference infrastructure at scale. There's a lot more on the immediate horizon. Our customers build fast-growing businesses around our APIs, which power product features that were never before possible. ChatGPT is a prime example of what is currently possible. We simultaneously ensure that our powerful tools are used responsibly. Safe deployment is more important to us than unfettered growth. The Fraud Engineering team works within our Applied Engineering organization identifying and responding to fraudsters on our platform. We are looking for a software engineer with anti fraud & abuse experience to help architect and build our next-generation anti-fraud systems.

## About the role

The Scaled Abuse team protects OpenAI’s products and customers by detecting, preventing, and responding to fraudulent and abusive behavior at scale. We build and operate the backend and data systems that power real-time detection, investigation workflows, and enforcement — balancing strong protections with a great user experience as the platform grows. Our work sits at the intersection of engineering and abuse expertise: we partner closely with Trust & Safety, Security, and Product to understand emerging attack patterns, translate messy signals into clear system behavior, and continuously harden our defenses. The problems are dynamic and ambiguous by default, so we value engineers who can quickly dive into an unfamiliar codebase, develop strong intuition about how it works end-to-end, and propose pragmatic improvements that make the entire stack more resilient.

In this role, you will:

- Design and build systems for fraud detection and remediation while balancing fraud loss, cost of implementation, and customer experience
- Work closely with finance, security, product, research, and trust & safety operations to holistically combat fraudulent and abusive actors on our system
- Stay abreast of the latest techniques and tools to stay several steps ahead of determined and well resourced adversaries
- Utilize GPT-5 and future models to more effectively combat fraud and abuse

You might thrive in this role if you:

- Have at least 5 years of software engineering experience in backend and data systems.
- Have at least 2 years experience in fraud or abuse analysis, investigation, and/or operations
- Can dive into our codebase, intuit how it works, and be able to have a strong intuition for suggestions that will lead us to a stronger engineering position.
- A voracious and intrinsic desire to learn and fill in missing skills. An equally strong talent for sharing that information clearly and concisely with others
- Are comfortable with ambiguity and rapidly changing conditions. You view changes as an opportunity to add structure and order when necessary
- Experience in Machine Learning techniques is a plus, but not required

Our tech stack Our infrastructure is built on Terraform, Kubernetes, Azure, Python, Postgres, and Kafka. While we value experience with these technologies, we are primarily looking for engineers with strong technical skills and the ability to quickly pick up new tools and frameworks.

## 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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