OpenAI
Principal Software Engineer, Productivity
$459K–$536K
San Francisco · Principal · Full-time · Posted Oct 22, 2026
- Experience
- 10+ years of software engineering experience.
About the job
Sets technical direction and builds the platform and product experiences that help people create, discover, and use plugins in ChatGPT and Codex, including improving model–plugin interactions.
What you'll do
- Lead cross-team technical initiatives and shape product and design decisions.
- Design and ship APIs, SDKs, services, and user experiences for creating and using plugins.
- Improve plugin quality, reliability, permissions, and model use in collaboration with Research and other teams.
What they ask for
- 10+ years of software engineering experience.
- Track record of building and shipping products or platforms used by people or developers.
- Experience leading complex technical initiatives across teams and partnering on product and design decisions.
- Comfort working across web interfaces and backend systems.
Nice to have
- Experience with identity, permissions, or integration-heavy systems.
- Experience building applied AI systems, diagnosing model–tool interactions, and measuring reliability and quality.
Pay
$459K – $536K (base salary)
Tools
ChatGPT, Codex, Model Context Protocol (MCP)
AI focus
Improve when and how models use plugins; work with Research to diagnose model–tool failures and measure quality and reliability as models evolve.
Model-written summary · the original posting is authoritative