# Full Stack Software Engineer, Product Explorations **Company:** [OpenAI](https://scaleengineer.com/companies/openai) Join OpenAI's Product Explorations team as a Full Stack Software Engineer to transform cutting-edge AI model capabilities into impactful user experiences. This role offers high autonomy and ownership in a fast-paced, early-stage environment where you'll prototype ideas rapidly, collaborate across research and product teams, and scale the strongest concepts into production. Ideal candidates combine strong full stack engineering expertise with product intuition, thrive in ambiguous environments, and are excited about working at the intersection of AI model capabilities and user-centric product development. **Role:** Full Stack Engineer **Seniority:** Senior **Locations:** San Francisco **Salary:** 347000–385000 USD [Apply](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/4d1ede8c-3d4c-4503-8408-81e4b68c5c91) Canonical: https://scaleengineer.com/jobs/openai/full-stack-software-engineer-product-explorations --- ## Responsibilities - Identify High-Impact Product Opportunities: Systematically identify and evaluate promising product and technical opportunities across OpenAI's product portfolio. Synthesize insights from user feedback, market trends, and emerging AI capabilities to surface high-leverage initiatives that can meaningfully improve user engagement and business impact. - Rapid Prototyping and Iteration: Move swiftly from conceptual ideas to functional prototypes, enabling quick validation of product hypotheses. Build scrappy, focused implementations that test core assumptions without overengineering, allowing the team to learn from real user interaction and iterate based on feedback. - Full Stack Product Development: Architect and develop complete product experiences spanning frontend interfaces, backend services, and database infrastructure. Build scalable systems that unlock value from new model capabilities, ensuring smooth integration between user-facing experiences and underlying AI systems. - Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner seamlessly with Research, Applied, product, design, data science, and engineering teams. Facilitate alignment across diverse perspectives, translate technical constraints into product opportunities, and maintain clear communication channels to unblock dependencies and accelerate decision-making. - Data-Driven Validation and Scaling: Leverage user feedback, product analytics, and experimentation frameworks to rigorously validate which ideas merit scaling into larger product investments. Design and execute A/B tests, measure key metrics, and use data to inform prioritization decisions that maximize return on engineering investment. - Team Leadership and Culture: Drive alignment across teams and help shape a culture of speed, ownership, curiosity, and thoughtful experimentation. Mentor team members, establish best practices for rapid iteration, and champion a collaborative approach that balances moving quickly with maintaining high engineering standards. ## Requirements ### education - {"name":"Computer Science or Related Field","description":"Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Mathematics, Physics, or equivalent professional experience. Strong fundamental understanding of algorithms, data structures, and system design principles."} ### technical - {"name":"Full Stack Web Development","description":"Demonstrated expertise building complete product experiences from frontend to backend. Proficiency in modern web development patterns, API design, and system architecture that can handle millions of concurrent users."} - {"name":"Backend Service Architecture","description":"Strong understanding of designing scalable backend systems, microservices patterns, and distributed systems. Experience building APIs that integrate with machine learning models and handle high-throughput workloads efficiently."} - {"name":"Frontend Development","description":"Advanced proficiency in building responsive, intuitive user interfaces. Experience with modern frontend frameworks and ability to create engaging experiences that effectively communicate AI model capabilities to end users."} - {"name":"Database Design and Optimization","description":"Experience designing relational and non-relational database schemas for production systems. Knowledge of query optimization, indexing strategies, and data consistency patterns at scale."} - {"name":"AI/ML Model Integration","description":"Experience integrating large language models or other AI systems into production applications. Understanding of token limits, latency requirements, prompt engineering, and API patterns for model interaction."} ### experience - {"name":"5+ Years Full Stack Engineering","description":"Minimum five years of professional software engineering experience shipping full stack product features from prototype through production. Should have led the development of consumer-facing or B2B SaaS products at scale."} - {"name":"Startup or Early-Stage Environment","description":"Proven experience thriving in high-velocity, early-stage environments where ambiguity is the norm. Comfortable wearing multiple hats, making decisions with incomplete information, and pivoting quickly based on market feedback and product signals."} - {"name":"Product-Focused Engineering","description":"Track record of being product-minded and data-driven in engineering decisions. Examples of independently identifying features or improvements that meaningfully impacted user engagement, retention, or revenue metrics."} - {"name":"Cross-Functional Leadership","description":"Experience collaborating effectively with product managers, designers, data scientists, and researchers. Demonstrated ability to facilitate technical discussions, translate between engineering and non-technical stakeholders, and maintain alignment across silos."} ## Skills ### required - {"name":"Python","description":"Production-level Python development for backend services, API development, and system integration. Modern Python practices including async/await, type hints, and web framework expertise."} - {"name":"TypeScript/JavaScript","description":"Advanced TypeScript for building type-safe, maintainable web applications. Experience with Node.js backend development or modern frontend frameworks like React, Vue, or similar technologies."} - {"name":"System Design","description":"Ability to architect scalable systems that handle millions of requests efficiently. Proficiency discussing tradeoffs between different architectural patterns and making informed engineering decisions."} - {"name":"SQL and Database Management","description":"Strong SQL writing skills and deep understanding of relational database design, optimization, and operational concerns. Experience with both transaction processing and analytical queries."} - {"name":"REST APIs and Web Standards","description":"Deep expertise designing and implementing RESTful or GraphQL APIs. Understanding of HTTP semantics, authentication/authorization patterns, and API versioning strategies."} - {"name":"Product Intuition","description":"Ability to think like a product manager alongside engineering expertise. Demonstrated skill in identifying features that matter for users and business, prioritizing ruthlessly, and saying no to low-impact work."} ### preferred - {"name":"LLM and Generative AI Experience","description":"Professional experience building with large language models, prompt engineering, or other generative AI systems. Familiarity with OpenAI's APIs, LangChain, or similar frameworks is advantageous."} - {"name":"Containerization and DevOps","description":"Practical experience with Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure-as-code. Comfort deploying and managing applications in cloud environments (AWS, GCP, Azure)."} - {"name":"Data Analytics and Experimentation","description":"Experience designing and analyzing A/B tests, writing analytics instrumentation, and leveraging data tools (SQL analytics, Mixpanel, Amplitude). Understanding of statistical significance and experimental design."} - {"name":"Consumer or High-Scale SaaS","description":"Background building products for millions of end users. Experience with performance optimization, observability, real-time systems, or handling viral growth scenarios."} - {"name":"Rapid Prototyping Frameworks","description":"Familiarity with low-code tools, rapid development frameworks, or prototyping platforms. Experience shipping hackathon-quality projects to production or moving from concept to user-facing feature in days."} - {"name":"Research Collaboration","description":"Background working alongside academic researchers or research teams. Ability to translate research papers, theoretical concepts, or experimental results into actionable product improvements."} ## Tech stack ### tools - {"name":"Git/GitHub","description":"Version control and collaboration platform essential for team-based development, code review workflows, and maintaining product code quality."} - {"name":"Docker","description":"Containerization technology enabling consistent development environments, simplified deployment, and scalable infrastructure management across teams."} - {"name":"Kubernetes","description":"Orchestration platform for managing containerized applications at scale, handling autoscaling and reliability for production AI-native product services."} - {"name":"OpenAI API","description":"Direct integration with GPT models and other OpenAI capabilities, central to building product experiences that leverage cutting-edge language models and reasoning."} - {"name":"CI/CD Platforms","description":"Continuous integration and deployment tools (GitHub Actions, Jenkins, GitLab CI) for automating testing, building, and deployment workflows to production."} ### others - {"name":"Prompt Engineering","description":"Systematic approach to crafting effective prompts for large language models, optimizing for quality outputs and cost efficiency in AI-powered product features."} - {"name":"A/B Testing and Analytics","description":"Frameworks and tools for experiment design, statistical analysis, and data-driven decision making. Knowledge of metric selection, significance testing, and experimentation platforms."} - {"name":"System Design and Architecture","description":"Distributed systems concepts including consistency models, scalability patterns, fault tolerance, and observability required for building production AI-native products."} - {"name":"Agile/Iterative Development","description":"Methodologies and practices for rapid iteration, customer feedback incorporation, and continuous improvement cycles essential to exploration and prototype-to-production workflows."} - {"name":"Observability and Monitoring","description":"Logging, metrics, and tracing infrastructure (Datadog, New Relic, Prometheus) enabling visibility into system behavior, debugging, and performance optimization."} ### databases - {"name":"PostgreSQL","description":"Enterprise-grade relational database providing ACID compliance, advanced query capabilities, and scalability for production OpenAI systems and user data."} - {"name":"Redis","description":"In-memory data store essential for caching, session management, real-time features, and performance optimization in high-throughput product systems."} - {"name":"MongoDB","description":"NoSQL database suitable for flexible schema requirements, rapid prototyping, and scaling document-based workloads in exploratory product phases."} - {"name":"Pinecone or Vector Databases","description":"Specialized databases for semantic search and embedding storage, critical for building features leveraging AI model outputs and similarity matching."} ### languages - {"name":"Python","description":"Primary backend language for API development, service integration, and system architecture at OpenAI and across modern AI-native products."} - {"name":"TypeScript","description":"Recommended for frontend development and Node.js backend services, providing type safety and reduced runtime errors in complex product experiences."} - {"name":"JavaScript","description":"Essential for dynamic frontend development and browser-based interactions in user-facing product experiences and real-time features."} - {"name":"SQL","description":"Critical for database query optimization, complex data analysis, and ensuring efficient data retrieval at scale for both prototypes and production systems."} ### frameworks - {"name":"React","description":"Popular choice for building interactive user interfaces with component-based architecture, enabling rapid iteration and complex state management for AI-native applications."} - {"name":"FastAPI","description":"Modern Python web framework ideal for rapid API development with automatic documentation and async support, perfect for prototyping to production workflows."} - {"name":"Next.js","description":"Full stack framework for rapid development combining frontend and backend, enabling quicker time-to-market for new product explorations with server-side rendering capabilities."} - {"name":"Django","description":"Battle-tested Python framework with built-in admin, ORM, and authentication, suitable for complex product backends and rapid development cycles."} - {"name":"Node.js","description":"JavaScript runtime enabling full stack JavaScript development, useful for consistent language across frontend and backend with strong async capabilities."} ## Benefits ### benefits - {"name":"Competitive Equity and Bonus","description":"Comprehensive compensation package including significant equity stakes in OpenAI, aligning your success with company growth. Performance-based bonuses tied to product impact and team objectives."} - {"name":"Comprehensive Health Coverage","description":"Extensive medical, dental, and vision insurance plans covering employees and dependents. Mental health services, wellness programs, and preventive care through top-tier providers."} - {"name":"401(k) Retirement Plan","description":"Tax-advantaged retirement savings with company matching contributions, supporting long-term financial planning and security for career-focused engineers."} - {"name":"Unlimited Paid Time Off","description":"Flexible vacation and personal days policy reflecting trust in engineers' time management. Sabbatical opportunities for longer-term exploration and personal development after tenure milestones."} - {"name":"Remote Work Flexibility","description":"While this San Francisco-based role requires in-office presence, OpenAI offers flexible working arrangements and relocation assistance for new hires joining the team."} - {"name":"Professional Development","description":"Learning budgets for conferences, courses, and certifications. Access to internal knowledge sharing, mentorship from world-class AI researchers and engineers, and cutting-edge AI system exposure."} - {"name":"Relocation Support","description":"Comprehensive relocation package for external hires, including moving expenses, temporary housing assistance, and guidance navigating the San Francisco Bay Area."} - {"name":"Cutting-Edge Technology Access","description":"Unique opportunity to work with state-of-the-art AI models, research systems, and infrastructure. Early access to new capabilities and direct collaboration with researchers pushing boundaries of AI."} - {"name":"Mission-Driven Work","description":"Opportunity to shape the future of AI technology with direct impact on OpenAI's products used by millions. Contribute to ensuring AI benefits humanity while working on technically challenging problems."} ## Compensation - **max:** 0 - **min:** 0 - **currency:** - **stockOptions:** false ## Interview process ### steps ## Full description **About the Team** The Product Explorations team is a small, high-ownership product exploration group focused on turning new model capabilities into impactful user experiences. We operate across Applied and Research, working closely with product, engineering, design, and research partners to identify promising opportunities, prototype quickly, validate ideas, and determine which efforts should scale into larger product investments. Our objective is broad: discover and build experiences that can meaningfully improve user engagement, product impact, and revenue across OpenAI’s products. We move quickly, follow strong product signals, and take ideas from early exploration to meaningful user impact. **About the Role** We are looking for product-minded full stack engineers to join the Product Explorations team and drive high-impact, net-new product explorations. In this role, you will independently identify promising opportunities, move quickly from idea to prototype, and work across teams to validate and launch new experiences. You will operate with a high degree of autonomy, use strong product intuition, and make thoughtful decisions in ambiguous environments. You may work on a new ChatGPT experience one week, explore a new model capability the next, and partner with Research or Applied teams to turn the strongest ideas into scalable products. This role is a strong fit for someone who enjoys building from scratch, iterating quickly, and working on projects where the path forward is not always obvious. **In this role, you will:** * Identify and pursue high-leverage product and technical opportunities across OpenAI’s products * Move quickly from idea to prototype, validation, launch, and iteration * Build full stack product experiences that unlock value from new model capabilities * Work closely with Research, Applied, product, design, data science, and engineering partners * Use user feedback, product signals, and experimentation to determine which ideas should scale * Drive alignment across teams and helping shape a culture of speed, ownership, curiosity, and thoughtful experimentation **You might thrive in this role if you:** * Have experience building and shipping full stack product experiences, from early prototypes through production * Thrive in early-stage, highly iterative environments and can move quickly from idea to execution with limited structure * Bring strong product intuition and an ability to identify what matters most for users and the business * Communicate clearly and collaborate effectively across engineering, product, design, and research * Bring a high degree of autonomy, agency, and ownership in ambiguous environments * Want to work at the intersection of model capabilities, product development, and user impact **Location:** * This role is exclusively based in our San Francisco HQ. We 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.