Software Engineer, Ad Formats

Backend Engineer · Senior · Full Time

San FranciscoUSD 230k – 385k3mo ago
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Role

What you'll do.

Software Engineer, Ad Formats at OpenAI's Monetization team is a foundational engineering role focused on building the creative rendering and presentation layer of OpenAI's ads ecosystem. You'll design and scale infrastructure for ad formats spanning text, image, video, native, conversational, and interactive experiences while ensuring reliable performance, privacy compliance, and seamless integration with the ChatGPT platform. This is a 0→1 greenfield opportunity requiring 7+ years of experience architecting high-scale consumer products, creative systems, or platform infrastructure, with strong proficiency in full-stack distributed systems and demonstrated excellence in shipping user-facing experiences at scale.

Responsibilities

  • Design and Scale Creative Rendering Systems: Architect, design, and scale the creative rendering and presentation systems that power OpenAI's ads experiences across multiple surfaces and platforms. Define the foundational infrastructure that enables reliable, performant ad delivery at global scale.
  • Develop Multi-Format Ad Infrastructure: Build comprehensive infrastructure and tooling supporting diverse ad formats including text, image, video, native, conversational, and interactive experiences. Create abstraction layers and rendering engines that handle the complexity of multiple media types and presentation contexts.
  • Define Ad Structure and Delivery Specifications: Establish how ads are structured, rendered, validated, and delivered across ChatGPT and other OpenAI product surfaces. Create schemas, standards, and specification documents that guide consistent implementation across engineering teams.
  • Build Reliable and Performant Ad Delivery Systems: Construct distributed systems ensuring ads render reliably, perform efficiently, and meet high quality standards across diverse platforms and devices. Implement monitoring, observability, and error handling to maintain system health and user experience integrity.
  • Collaborate on Product Prototyping and Shipping: Partner closely with Product, Design, and Research teams to prototype, experiment with, and ship ad experiences that feel native and seamless within the core ChatGPT user experience. Drive rapid iteration cycles while maintaining engineering quality standards.
  • Architect Distributed Services Infrastructure: Design distributed systems and services with strong guarantees around reliability, usability, privacy, and performance. Build service boundaries, data models, and communication patterns that support scaling and evolution of the ads platform.
  • Drive 0→1 Product Development: Lead greenfield product development through rapid prototyping, experimentation, and iterative deployment. Make architectural decisions early that scale as the platform matures, balancing moving quickly with building sustainable foundations.
  • Shape Platform Strategy and Roadmap: Contribute significantly to technical strategy for the ads formats platform. Propose new architectural directions, identify technical opportunities, and help shape the roadmap based on product requirements, engineering constraints, and long-term vision.
  • Maintain Engineering Excellence and Quality Standards: Uphold high engineering rigor across the codebase through comprehensive testing, clear documentation, strong observability, and operational best practices. Establish patterns and standards that guide team quality and maintainability.
  • Ensure Safety, Privacy, and Compliance: Design and implement systems that uphold the highest levels of safety, privacy, fairness, and policy compliance across all ad rendering and delivery systems. Ensure monetization aligns with user trust and OpenAI's standards for responsible AI deployment.

Qualifications

What we look for.

Technical

  • Distributed Systems Architecture

    Strong expertise designing and building scalable distributed systems, microservices, and backend infrastructure serving high-traffic consumer products. Experience with service-oriented architectures, data consistency patterns, and systems that handle millions of concurrent users.

  • Full-Stack System Design

    Comfortable working across the full technical stack spanning frontend rendering systems, backend infrastructure, APIs, and databases. Ability to understand and optimize the complete path of data and user interactions through complex systems.

  • Performance Optimization and Scalability

    Demonstrated ability to build systems that maintain performance at scale. Experience profiling, optimizing, and debugging systems under high load. Proven track record reducing latency, improving throughput, and scaling systems 10x or more.

  • Production Systems and Observability

    Deep experience building production-grade systems with comprehensive monitoring, logging, alerting, and observability. Comfortable with operational considerations, incident response, and building reliable systems that fail gracefully.

  • Platform and Infrastructure Development

    Experience building platforms and infrastructure that other teams depend on. Comfortable thinking about API design, versioning, backward compatibility, and building systems that scale across multiple teams and use cases.

Education

  • Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or Related Field

    Formal education in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or equivalent practical experience demonstrating strong fundamentals in algorithms, systems, and software design principles.

Experience

  • 7+ Years Building High-Scale Consumer Products

    7 or more years of professional experience building and scaling high-traffic consumer product experiences. Track record shipping features, systems, or products used by millions of users globally.

  • Creative Systems or Ads Platform Experience

    Bonus experience working with creative rendering systems, ads platforms, content delivery networks, design systems, media platforms, or interactive product experiences. Deep understanding of challenges in rendering and delivering diverse content types at scale.

  • Complex System Architecture and Delivery

    Proven track record architecting and delivering complex distributed systems powering user-facing experiences across multiple platforms and surfaces. Experience navigating tradeoffs between performance, reliability, maintainability, and velocity.

  • 0→1 Product Development Leadership

    Comfortable and effective working in greenfield environments where systems, architecture, and user experiences must be defined from scratch. Thrives when foundational decisions have outsized impact on future product direction.

Skills

Required

  • Backend System Design

    Expert-level ability to design scalable, maintainable backend systems and services. Strong grasp of architectural patterns, API design, data models, and system boundaries.

  • Systems Thinking and Problem Solving

    Ability to think holistically about complex systems, identify bottlenecks, propose solutions, and make tradeoff decisions. Strong analytical skills and comfort with ambiguity and technical uncertainty.

  • Production Engineering and Operations

    Deep familiarity with production systems, deployment practices, monitoring, alerting, and incident response. Comfortable taking systems to production and maintaining them reliably at scale.

  • Cross-Functional Collaboration

    Strong ability to communicate with Product, Design, Research, and other engineering teams. Comfortable translating requirements, explaining technical tradeoffs, and working toward shared goals.

  • Product Intuition and User Empathy

    Natural product sense and ability to think from the user's perspective. Interested in how systems impact end-user experience and motivated to build delightful, performant user experiences.

  • Software Engineering Fundamentals

    Strong command of software engineering principles including testing, documentation, code quality, design patterns, and maintainability. Commitment to engineering rigor and long-term code health.

  • Privacy and Security Awareness

    Understanding of privacy principles, data protection, security best practices, and compliance considerations. Ability to design systems that minimize data collection, respect user privacy, and comply with regulations.

Preferred

  • Ads Ecosystem Knowledge

    Nice to have

    Familiarity with ad tech platforms, ad formats, auction systems, creative rendering, or advertising infrastructure. Understanding of advertiser needs, publisher economics, and user experience in ads contexts.

  • Content Delivery and Streaming

    Nice to have

    Experience with content delivery networks, media streaming, asset management systems, or optimizing delivery of rich media content. Understanding of optimization strategies for images, video, and interactive content.

  • Design Systems and Component Libraries

    Nice to have

    Experience building or working with design systems, component libraries, or shared UI infrastructure. Understanding of how to abstract and standardize experiences across products.

  • Interactive and Real-Time Systems

    Nice to have

    Background building interactive product experiences, real-time systems, or conversational interfaces. Experience optimizing for responsiveness and user interaction patterns.

  • Large-Scale Database and Caching Systems

    Nice to have

    Hands-on experience with distributed databases, caching systems, and optimizing data access patterns. Understanding of consistency models, replication, and partitioning strategies.

  • A/B Testing and Experimentation Platforms

    Nice to have

    Experience building or working extensively with A/B testing infrastructure, experimentation platforms, and statistical analysis. Comfort with data-driven decision making and measuring impact.

  • AI/ML Systems Integration

    Nice to have

    Experience integrating machine learning models into production systems, optimizing inference latency, or building systems that handle dynamic ML-driven personalization and content ranking.

Tech stack

Languages

PythonTypeScript/JavaScriptGoJava or C++

Frameworks

React or VueFastAPI or DjangogRPC or Protocol BuffersGraphQL or REST

Databases

PostgreSQLRedis or MemcachedElasticsearch or SolrBigQuery or SnowflakeDynamoDB or Cassandra

Tools

KubernetesDockerPrometheus and GrafanaGit and Version ControlCI/CD PipelinesDataDog or New Relic

Other

Load Testing and Performance AnalysisAnalytics and MetricsAPI Rate Limiting and ThrottlingSecurity and EncryptionMessage Queues and Event Streaming

Compensation

Pay and benefits.

Base·USD 230,000 – 385,000

Equity·Stock options

Benefits

  • Equity and Stock Options

    Significant equity stake in OpenAI as part of compensation package, providing meaningful upside participation in company growth and success.

  • Comprehensive Health Coverage

    Full medical, dental, and vision insurance with OpenAI covering the majority of premium costs for employees and eligible dependents.

  • Retirement Planning

    Competitive 401(k) retirement savings plan with company matching contributions to support long-term financial planning.

  • Generous Paid Time Off

    Flexible paid time off policy allowing adequate time for vacation, wellness, and personal development throughout the year.

  • Professional Development

    Learning budgets and opportunities for technical growth, conference attendance, training, and skill development in cutting-edge AI technologies.

  • Relocation Assistance

    Comprehensive support for relocating to San Francisco headquarters including moving expenses, housing assistance, and settlement support.

  • Remote Work Flexibility

    While based in San Francisco, access to flexible work arrangements and modern office facilities designed for collaborative engineering.

  • AI Product Access

    Early access to OpenAI's latest AI products and research, including GPT models and emerging capabilities for professional use.

Full posting

Original listing.

About the Team

The Monetization team is a new cross-functional group working across engineering, product, research, and design to build the foundational systems that will help OpenAI scale access to intelligence responsibly. Our mission is to develop user-first, privacy-preserving monetization products, including next-generation ads experiences, that strengthen user trust, unlock economic opportunity, and support OpenAI’s long-term innovation.

Monetization plays a critical role in enabling OpenAI to continue pushing the boundaries of AI capabilities while ensuring the benefits of AGI are broadly shared. We believe monetization must be aligned with user value, uphold rigorous privacy and safety standards, and sustain a healthy ecosystem of developers, advertisers, and businesses.

This team operates in a greenfield environment and moves quickly through prototyping, experimentation, and iterative deployment. We partner closely with Product, Design, and Research to bring new ad experiences into real-world systems across OpenAI surfaces at global scale, including thoughtfully integrating them into the core ChatGPT experience.

About the Role

We’re looking for an experienced Software Engineer to help build the creative rendering and presentation layer of OpenAI’s ads ecosystem. This is a foundational role responsible for defining how ads are structured, rendered, and delivered across different surfaces, platforms, and media types.

You’ll work across the full technical stack to build infrastructure and tooling for new ad formats, including text, image, video, native, conversational, and interactive experiences. You will help ensure these formats render reliably, perform efficiently, and feel natural within the core ChatGPT experience. You’ll collaborate deeply with Product, Design, and Research to create ads experiences that are useful, high-quality, privacy-preserving, and aligned with OpenAI’s standards for safety and user trust.

In this role, you will:

  • Design, build, and scale the creative rendering and presentation systems that power OpenAI’s ads experiences.

  • Develop infrastructure and tooling for ad formats across text, image, video, native, conversational, and interactive surfaces.

  • Define how ads are structured, rendered, validated, and delivered across ChatGPT and other OpenAI product experiences.

  • Build systems that ensure ads render reliably, perform efficiently, and meet high quality standards across platforms.

  • Partner closely with Product, Design, and Research to prototype and ship ad experiences that feel native to the core ChatGPT experience.

  • Architect distributed systems and services with strong reliability, usability, privacy, and performance guarantees.

  • Drive 0→1 product development through rapid prototyping, experimentation, and iterative deployment.

  • Contribute to technical strategy, propose new directions, and help shape the roadmap for OpenAI’s ads formats platform.

  • Maintain high engineering rigor through strong testing, documentation, observability, and operational best practices.

  • Uphold the highest levels of safety, privacy, fairness, and policy compliance across all ad rendering and delivery systems.

You might thrive in this role if you:

  • Have 7+ years of experience building high-scale consumer product experiences, creative systems, ads systems, or platform infrastructure.

  • Have a track record of architecting and delivering complex systems that power user-facing experiences across multiple surfaces.

  • Care deeply about product quality, performance, reliability, and the details of how experiences render for users.

  • Are comfortable working at the intersection of frontend systems, backend infrastructure, design, and product strategy.

  • Bring strong product intuition and enjoy collaborating deeply with Product, Design, and Research.

  • Thrive in 0→1 environments where systems, architecture, and user experiences must be defined from scratch.

  • Communicate clearly, think holistically, and make decisions rooted in both user needs and long-term sustainability.

  • Are motivated by building privacy-preserving, safe, and user-first monetization systems.

  • Bonus: Have experience with ads formats, creative rendering systems, content delivery, design systems, media platforms, or interactive product experiences.

Location

This role is exclusively based in our San Francisco HQ. We offer relocation assistance to new employees.

Compensation Range: $230K - 385K USD

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.

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. 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.

OpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy

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.

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