OpenAI
Software Engineer, Foundations Search
$266K–$455K
San Francisco · Full-time · Posted Apr 14, 2026
About the job
Build and scale retrieval infrastructure that lets models find and use relevant information across OpenAI products and research.
What you'll do
- Build indexing, serving, and query-execution infrastructure, including low-latency, high-throughput systems.
- Productionize embedding and retrieval techniques and support dense, sparse, and hybrid retrieval pipelines.
- Own performance, reliability, and observability, and collaborate across research and engineering teams on end-to-end integration.
What they ask for
- Experience building and scaling distributed systems.
- Background in search, retrieval, or indexing systems.
- Familiarity with embedding-based or ML-powered systems.
- Experience with performance optimization and production reliability.
Nice to have
Pay
$266K – $455K (base salary)
AI focus
Build retrieval systems and model–system interfaces for agentic workflows, including productionizing embedding and retrieval techniques.
Model-written summary · the original posting is authoritative