Software Engineer, Ad Formats
OpenAI2 days ago
Location
San Francisco
Type
Full Time
Salary
USD 230,000 – 385,000
Level
Senior
Role
Backend Engineer
Posted
May 26, 2026
Full TimeSenior
The role
Summary
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.
What you'll do
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.
What we look for
Technical
Distributed Systems ArchitectureStrong 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 DesignComfortable 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 ScalabilityDemonstrated 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 ObservabilityDeep 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 DevelopmentExperience 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 FieldFormal 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 Products7 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 ExperienceBonus 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 DeliveryProven 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 LeadershipComfortable 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 skills
Backend System DesignExpert-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 SolvingAbility 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 OperationsDeep familiarity with production systems, deployment practices, monitoring, alerting, and incident response. Comfortable taking systems to production and maintaining them reliably at scale.
Cross-Functional CollaborationStrong 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 EmpathyNatural 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 FundamentalsStrong 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 AwarenessUnderstanding 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.
Nice to have
Ads Ecosystem KnowledgeFamiliarity 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 StreamingExperience 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 LibrariesExperience 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 SystemsBackground building interactive product experiences, real-time systems, or conversational interfaces. Experience optimizing for responsiveness and user interaction patterns.
Large-Scale Database and Caching SystemsHands-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 PlatformsExperience 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 IntegrationExperience integrating machine learning models into production systems, optimizing inference latency, or building systems that handle dynamic ML-driven personalization and content ranking.
Compensation & benefits
Salary
USD 230,000 – 385,000 (annual)
Stock options
Available
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.
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OpenAI is an American artificial intelligence research organization developing advanced AI models like GPT. Focused on ensuring AI benefits humanity, it creates tools for natural language processing and generative AI applications.
San Francisco, California, United StatesFounded 2015openai.com
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
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