# Software Engineer, Codex — User Activation
**Company:** [OpenAI](https://scaleengineer.com/companies/openai)
Join OpenAI's Codex team as a Full Stack Software Engineer focused on User Activation, where you'll build the product experiences that drive adoption of an AI software engineering teammate across enterprises. This role combines frontend polish with robust backend architecture to create onboarding, discovery, collaboration, and activation surfaces that help developers and teams seamlessly integrate Codex into their workflows. You'll work across the full development stack—web, IDEs, CLI, and integrations—partnering with product, design, research, and customers to transform adoption challenges into scalable, data-driven solutions.
**Role:** Full Stack Engineer
**Seniority:** Mid
**Locations:** San Francisco
**Salary:** 230000–385000 USD
[Apply](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/d1c6cb87-a44d-4d04-92a8-dc40eccd090e)
Canonical: https://scaleengineer.com/jobs/openai/software-engineer-codex-user-activation
---
## Responsibilities

- Build Onboarding and Discovery Experiences: Design and implement intuitive onboarding flows that enable developers to quickly connect Codex to their repositories, development tools, environments, and existing workflows. Create discovery surfaces including plugins, skills, integrations, templates, recommendations, and strategic workflow entry points that help users understand and leverage Codex capabilities.
- Develop Collaborative Team Systems: Engineer full-featured collaborative experiences including workspace setup, team invitations, sharing mechanisms, team-level configuration controls, and usage visibility dashboards that facilitate adoption across organizations and remove barriers to team-wide deployment.
- Implement Full-Stack Product Architecture: Architect and build scalable systems spanning web applications, IDE extensions, command-line interfaces, and third-party integrations while balancing polished user experience with production-grade backend reliability, performance, and data consistency.
- Execute Data-Driven Product Iteration: Partner with product and design teams to design and run A/B experiments, analyze activation funnels, identify adoption blockers, instrument analytics, and rapidly iterate based on quantified user behavior and engagement metrics.
- Translate Customer Insights into Product Features: Work directly with customers, go-to-market teams, and Forward Deployed Engineers to understand real-world adoption challenges, translate ambiguous customer problems into clear technical requirements, and build scalable solutions that drive organizational adoption.
- Define Activation Best Practices: Contribute to establishing what excellent onboarding, discovery, and activation experiences look like for an AI-powered software engineering teammate, setting product standards and patterns that guide future feature development.
- Collaborate Across Disciplines: Work seamlessly with product managers, designers, researchers, infrastructure engineers, GTM specialists, and customer success teams to ensure technical decisions support business objectives and product strategy.

## Requirements

### education

- {"name":"Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or Related Field","description":"Formal education in computer science, software engineering, mathematics, or a closely related field is typically expected, though equivalent practical experience may be considered."}

### technical

- {"name":"Full-Stack Web Development","description":"Production-grade experience building both frontend and backend systems with demonstrated ability to make thoughtful architectural trade-offs between user experience and system reliability."}
- {"name":"Frontend Technologies","description":"Proficiency with modern frontend frameworks and libraries, particularly React, TypeScript, and related web technologies for building responsive, performant user interfaces."}
- {"name":"Backend Development","description":"Strong backend engineering skills using languages such as Python, Go, or similar systems, with experience building scalable APIs, services, and systems that handle production traffic."}
- {"name":"API Design and Integration","description":"Experience designing and implementing REST or GraphQL APIs, building integrations with external services, IDE plugins/extensions, and CLI tooling."}
- {"name":"Analytics and Experimentation","description":"Familiarity with event-driven analytics, funnel analysis, A/B testing frameworks, and using data to inform product decisions."}
- {"name":"Production Operations","description":"Experience with monitoring, logging, error tracking, performance profiling, and operational best practices for maintaining reliable production systems."}

### experience

- {"name":"4-7 Years Full-Stack Development","description":"Proven track record of designing and shipping production-grade full-stack systems that thousands or millions of users rely on."}
- {"name":"Product-Focused Engineering","description":"Experience building onboarding, activation, growth, collaboration, discovery, or developer-centric product experiences with measurable user adoption and engagement outcomes."}
- {"name":"Cross-Functional Collaboration","description":"Demonstrated ability to work effectively across product, design, engineering, analytics, and customer-facing teams in fast-moving, ambiguous environments."}
- {"name":"Rapid Iteration in Ambiguity","description":"Proven success shipping features quickly in early-stage (0-to-1) product environments, navigating uncertainty, and applying strong product judgment to technical decisions."}

## Skills

### required

- {"name":"React","description":"Advanced proficiency building modern web UIs with React, including component architecture, state management, hooks, and performance optimization for interactive applications."}
- {"name":"TypeScript","description":"Strong TypeScript skills for type-safe frontend development, including interfaces, generics, and understanding of advanced type system concepts."}
- {"name":"Python or Go","description":"Proficiency with either Python or Go for backend services development, API implementation, and systems-level programming."}
- {"name":"Full-Stack Architecture","description":"Ability to design end-to-end systems considering frontend performance, backend scalability, API design, database schema, and operational requirements."}
- {"name":"Data-Driven Product Development","description":"Comfortable using analytics, experimentation, and user feedback to guide product decisions and validate feature hypotheses."}
- {"name":"User Experience Design Thinking","description":"Deep care for user experience with ability to translate ambiguous customer problems into simple, intuitive product flows that prioritize developer needs."}

### preferred

- {"name":"IDE Plugin/Extension Development","description":"Experience building extensions for VS Code, JetBrains IDEs, or other development environments, understanding IDE architecture and plugin APIs."}
- {"name":"CLI Development","description":"Background developing command-line interfaces and tools, including argument parsing, streaming output, interactive prompts, and integration patterns."}
- {"name":"GraphQL or Advanced API Design","description":"Experience designing complex APIs that serve multiple clients (web, mobile, CLI) with sophisticated query patterns or subscriptions."}
- {"name":"Enterprise SaaS Experience","description":"Background building features for enterprise software with consideration for workspace management, team collaboration, permissions, audit logging, and compliance."}
- {"name":"AI/ML Product Integration","description":"Experience integrating machine learning models or AI services into user-facing products and understanding the unique challenges of AI-powered features."}
- {"name":"Growth and Activation Metrics","description":"Familiarity with key activation metrics, funnel analysis, retention cohorts, and designing features specifically optimized for user adoption."}
- {"name":"Observability and Telemetry","description":"Experience instrumenting applications with comprehensive logging, metrics, and tracing to monitor system health and user behavior in production."}

## Tech stack

### tools

- {"name":"Git and GitHub","description":"Version control and collaboration platform for code management and team development workflows."}
- {"name":"Docker and Kubernetes","description":"Containerization and orchestration tools for deploying scalable applications in production environments."}
- {"name":"CI/CD Pipelines","description":"Automated testing, building, and deployment workflows to ensure code quality and rapid iteration."}
- {"name":"Datadog, New Relic, or Similar APM","description":"Application performance monitoring and observability tools for tracking system health and user behavior."}
- {"name":"A/B Testing Frameworks","description":"Tools and platforms for designing, running, and analyzing experiments to validate product hypotheses."}

### others

- {"name":"REST and GraphQL APIs","description":"API design paradigms for building scalable, maintainable service interfaces that support multiple client types."}
- {"name":"Event-Driven Architecture","description":"Asynchronous event streaming and processing patterns for building reactive, scalable systems."}
- {"name":"IDE Plugin Architecture","description":"Understanding of VS Code extensions, JetBrains plugin SDK, and IDE integration patterns."}
- {"name":"CLI Development","description":"Command-line interface design, argument parsing, interactive prompts, and terminal UI frameworks."}
- {"name":"OAuth 2.0 and Enterprise Authentication","description":"Identity and access management for enterprise SaaS applications including SSO, SAML, and workspace-scoped authentication."}

### databases

- {"name":"PostgreSQL","description":"Relational database for structured data storage, transactions, and complex queries in backend services."}
- {"name":"Redis","description":"In-memory cache and data store for performance optimization, sessions, and real-time features."}
- {"name":"Firebase","description":"Cloud database solution for rapid development of real-time, scalable backend services."}

### languages

- {"name":"TypeScript","description":"Primary frontend language for building type-safe React applications with modern JavaScript features."}
- {"name":"Python","description":"Common backend language for API services, data analysis, and integration logic within OpenAI infrastructure."}
- {"name":"Go","description":"High-performance backend language for building scalable microservices and systems."}
- {"name":"JavaScript","description":"Complementary language for client-side development, scripting, and full-stack JavaScript environments."}

### frameworks

- {"name":"React","description":"Primary frontend framework for building interactive user interfaces, component libraries, and single-page applications."}
- {"name":"Next.js","description":"Full-stack React framework supporting server-side rendering, API routes, and optimized deployment."}
- {"name":"FastAPI","description":"Modern Python web framework for building high-performance REST APIs with automatic documentation."}
- {"name":"gRPC","description":"High-performance RPC framework for service-to-service communication and building distributed systems."}

## Benefits

### benefits

- {"name":"Equity and Stock Options","description":"Competitive equity grants that give you ownership and upside in OpenAI's mission-driven organization."}
- {"name":"Comprehensive Health Insurance","description":"Medical, dental, and vision coverage for you and your family with OpenAI covering a significant portion of premiums."}
- {"name":"401(k) Retirement Plan","description":"Tax-advantaged retirement savings program with company matching to support long-term financial planning."}
- {"name":"Unlimited PTO","description":"Flexible time-off policy recognizing that sustained performance requires genuine rest and personal time."}
- {"name":"Professional Development","description":"Access to learning resources, conferences, training programs, and opportunities to grow skills in AI and emerging technologies."}
- {"name":"Mental Health and Wellness","description":"Comprehensive mental health support, wellness programs, and resources for work-life balance and employee wellbeing."}
- {"name":"Parental Leave","description":"Generous parental leave benefits supporting new parents in balancing career and family."}
- {"name":"Home Office Equipment","description":"Support for remote work setup including computer equipment and technology needed for productive development."}

## Compensation

- **max:** 320000
- **min:** 180000
- **currency:** USD
- **stockOptions:** true

## Interview process

### steps

- {"name":"Initial Recruiter Screening","description":"Phone or video call with OpenAI recruiter to discuss your background, experience with full-stack development, and interest in the Codex User Activation mission."}
- {"name":"Technical Phone Screen","description":"Discussion with a senior engineer covering full-stack fundamentals, systems design thinking, and approach to building product experiences that balance UX and engineering rigor."}
- {"name":"Product and Design Collaboration Discussion","description":"Conversation focused on how you think about user experience, product-market fit, and collaboration across engineering, design, and product teams in fast-moving environments."}
- {"name":"Technical System Design Interview","description":"Detailed architectural discussion designing a system similar in scope to Codex activation features, including frontend-backend integration, scalability considerations, and data-driven iteration patterns."}
- {"name":"Behavioral and Team Fit Interview","description":"Discussion exploring how you navigate ambiguity, make technical trade-offs, work across disciplines, and contribute to team culture and psychological safety."}
- {"name":"Leadership and OpenAI Values Alignment","description":"Final conversation with a manager or senior leader assessing alignment with OpenAI's mission, values around AI safety and responsible deployment, and long-term career goals."}

## Full description
**About the Team**

With Codex we’re building an AI software engineer. One that you can pair with, delegate to, or even ask to take on future tasks proactively. Our team is a fast-moving group within OpenAI, bringing together research, engineering, design, and product. We iteratively build the Codex agent harness and product to get the most out of the model, and we iteratively train the model to be great at complex software engineering tasks.

The Codex team is responsible for building state-of-the-art AI systems that can write code, reason about software, and act as intelligent agents for developers and non-developers alike. We operate across research, engineering, product, and infrastructure; owning the full lifecycle of experimentation, deployment, and iteration on novel coding capabilities.

Codex Enterprise builds the ecosystem, governance, and enterprise capabilities that help Codex spread across developers, teams, and organizations worldwide. The User Activation team owns the product experiences that help developers discover Codex, understand its capabilities, connect it to their workflows, and turn initial usage into sustained adoption across teams.

**About the Role**

As Codex adoption grows, our challenge is no longer just building powerful AI capabilities. It is helping developers and teams quickly understand how Codex fits into their work, connect it to the tools and codebases they already use, and unlock workflows that make Codex feel like a true teammate.

This role will help build the full-stack product surfaces that drive activation and adoption across Codex Enterprise. You will work across onboarding, workspace setup, integrations, discovery, collaboration, usage insights, and ecosystem capabilities that help Codex spread naturally through organizations.

You will partner closely with product, design, research, infrastructure, GTM, and customers to identify where users get stuck, where teams fail to adopt Codex, and what product experiences can turn curiosity into repeatable value.

This role owns systems end-to-end: from polished frontend experiences to backend services, experimentation, analytics, and production operations.

**In this role, you will:**

* Build onboarding, setup, and discovery experiences that help developers quickly connect Codex to their repositories, tools, environments, and existing workflows.
* Create product surfaces that help users discover Codex capabilities, including plugins, skills, integrations, templates, recommendations, and workflow entry points.
* Build collaborative team experiences that make Codex easier to adopt across organizations, including workspace setup, invitations, sharing, team-level configuration, and usage visibility.
* Develop full-stack systems across web, IDEs, CLI, and integrations, balancing polished user experience with reliable backend architecture.
* Partner with product and design to run experiments, understand activation funnels, identify adoption blockers, and iterate quickly based on real user behavior.
* Work directly with customers, GTM, and Forward Deployed teams to translate real-world adoption challenges into scalable product capabilities.
* Help define what great onboarding, discovery, and activation look like for an AI software engineering teammate.

**You might thrive in this role if you:**

* Have strong full-stack software engineering fundamentals and experience building polished, production-grade user experiences.
* Are comfortable working across frontend and backend systems, ideally with technologies such as React, TypeScript, Python, Go, or similar tools.
* Have experience building onboarding, activation, growth, collaboration, discovery, or developer-product experiences.
* Care deeply about user experience and can turn ambiguous customer problems into simple, intuitive product flows.
* Enjoy working across product, design, engineering, analytics, and customer-facing teams.
* Are comfortable using data, experimentation, and user feedback to guide product decisions.
* Enjoy 0 → 1 environments, move quickly through ambiguity, and bring strong product judgment to technical trade-offs.

**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.

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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.