# Software Engineer, Full Stack — Dots
**Company:** [OpenAI](https://scaleengineer.com/companies/openai)
This is a Senior/Staff Full Stack Software Engineer position at OpenAI's Dots team, building personal AI agents that help users accomplish goals across applications. You'll design and implement end-to-end product experiences spanning web interfaces, backend services, and agent execution systems, with emphasis on asynchronous workflows, persistence, and reliability. The role requires proven full-stack expertise, strong product instincts, and the ability to translate frontier AI capabilities into intuitive user experiences while establishing technical practices for a scaling product.
**Role:** Full Stack Engineer
**Seniority:** Senior
**Locations:** New York City
**Salary:** 347000–385000 USD
[Apply](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/dbe79b89-e593-44b3-8aec-c667f7134445)
Canonical: https://scaleengineer.com/jobs/openai/software-engineer-full-stack-dots
---
## Responsibilities

- Full-Stack Feature Development: Design and implement complete features spanning web interfaces, APIs, backend services, and data models. Take ownership of feature requirements from exploration and prototyping through architecture, implementation, code review, testing, launch, and production monitoring. Ensure consistency between frontend and backend systems while maintaining code quality and performance standards.
- Agent-User Interaction Workflows: Build and refine workflows enabling users to delegate tasks to personal AI agents, track progress, receive feedback, and collaborate with agents over time. Design state machines and data models that preserve coherence across sessions and devices, handling the complexity of long-running, asynchronous agent operations with clear user communication.
- Model Capability Translation: Partner with research, product, and design teams to understand emerging AI model capabilities and rapidly prototype product experiences that expose these capabilities to users. Navigate tradeoffs between prototype velocity and production quality while identifying which capabilities provide genuine user value.
- System Architecture & APIs: Design clean, well-documented interfaces between product surfaces and agent execution systems. Define API contracts, data schemas, and integration patterns that enable seamless communication between frontend, backend services, and AI systems. Ensure interfaces are flexible enough to support future expansion while remaining straightforward enough for team adoption.
- Performance & Reliability Optimization: Continuously optimize performance across the full stack, focusing on reducing user-facing latency, improving system throughput, and strengthening reliability. Implement sophisticated error handling, retry logic, and recovery mechanisms to gracefully handle partial failures. Monitor production systems and proactively identify bottlenecks before they impact users.
- Technical Direction & Best Practices: Help establish and evolve testing strategies, observability practices, code quality standards, and architectural patterns as the Dots product grows. Conduct design reviews, mentor other engineers through technical decisions, and document technical context to enable the team to make sound engineering choices independently.
- Production Operations & Incident Response: Own production reliability for systems you build, including on-call responsibilities. Respond to incidents effectively, debug production issues using observability tools, implement fixes, and drive post-incident improvements to prevent recurrence. Build comprehensive monitoring and alerting to catch issues early.
- Cross-Functional Communication: Communicate effectively with product, design, and research partners to understand user needs and constraints, translate feedback into actionable improvements, and provide technical input into product decisions. Help non-technical stakeholders understand technical limitations and possibilities to inform strategy.

## Requirements

### education

- {"name":"Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or Related Field","description":"Formal education in computer science, software engineering, or equivalent field providing foundational computer science concepts, algorithms, and systems thinking."}
- {"name":"Equivalent Professional Experience","description":"Extensive professional software engineering experience demonstrating mastery of computer science fundamentals and proven track record shipping production systems at scale. Formal degree not required if this criterion is met."}

### technical

- {"name":"Production Full-Stack Development","description":"Minimum 5-7 years of professional experience building and shipping production software across frontend, backend, and infrastructure, with demonstrated mastery of the complete software development lifecycle from architecture through deployment and monitoring."}
- {"name":"Frontend Engineering Excellence","description":"Expert proficiency building responsive, accessible web applications using modern JavaScript frameworks. Deep understanding of performance optimization, state management patterns, and user experience best practices."}
- {"name":"Backend & API Design","description":"Strong expertise designing scalable, maintainable backend systems and APIs. Experience with service architecture patterns, database optimization, and building systems that handle distributed load effectively."}
- {"name":"Asynchronous & Distributed Systems","description":"Advanced working knowledge of asynchronous programming, message-driven architectures, eventual consistency, and designing systems that operate reliably across network boundaries and partial failure scenarios."}
- {"name":"System Reliability & Observability","description":"Proven experience building resilient production systems with comprehensive monitoring, logging, tracing, and incident response capabilities. Understanding of failure modes, recovery strategies, and SLA management."}
- {"name":"Architectural Decision Making","description":"Ability to evaluate tradeoffs between technical approaches, document architectural decisions, and establish technical direction that balances short-term velocity with long-term maintainability."}

### experience

- {"name":"Senior/Staff-Level Product Development","description":"5-10+ years of professional experience as a senior engineer shipping multiple full-featured products, with proven ability to own projects from conception through production and scale."}
- {"name":"Cross-Functional Collaboration","description":"Demonstrated experience working effectively with product managers, designers, researchers, and other engineers to translate ambiguous requirements into shipped features and establish technical best practices."}
- {"name":"Ownership of Complex Systems","description":"Track record owning the full lifecycle of complex engineering projects, making pragmatic architectural decisions, and guiding other engineers through technical problem-solving and design review processes."}
- {"name":"Consumer Product Launch Experience","description":"Proven experience launching new consumer-facing products or features, understanding user needs, managing feedback loops, and iterating based on real-world usage patterns."}
- {"name":"Asynchronous Systems & Workflows","description":"Professional experience building systems that handle asynchronous, long-running operations with emphasis on state consistency, failure recovery, and user communication across sessions."}
- {"name":"Startup or Early-Stage Product Teams","description":"Background working in small, high-ownership engineering teams defining technical direction early in product development, particularly in building new categories of software."}

## Skills

### required

- {"name":"Full Stack Development","description":"Comprehensive experience building and shipping production systems across frontend, backend, and infrastructure layers with ability to move seamlessly between user interfaces and server-side architecture."}
- {"name":"Frontend Development","description":"Expert-level proficiency in building responsive, performant web interfaces with modern frameworks. Strong understanding of state management, UI/UX best practices, and cross-platform consistency."}
- {"name":"Backend Architecture","description":"Deep expertise in designing scalable APIs, microservices, and backend systems. Proficiency with REST/GraphQL design patterns, service-oriented architecture, and integration patterns."}
- {"name":"Database Design","description":"Strong proficiency in relational and non-relational data modeling, understanding of indexing, query optimization, consistency models, and schema evolution strategies."}
- {"name":"Asynchronous Systems","description":"Advanced understanding of asynchronous workflows, message queues, event-driven architecture, state machines, and distributed transaction handling across system boundaries."}
- {"name":"Systems Reliability","description":"Demonstrated expertise in designing fault-tolerant systems, implementing circuit breakers, retry logic, monitoring, alerting, and recovery strategies for production systems at scale."}
- {"name":"Product Thinking","description":"Strong ability to translate complex technical capabilities into intuitive user experiences, make pragmatic engineering tradeoffs between iteration speed and maintainability, and drive product decisions from concept through launch."}

### preferred

- {"name":"AI/ML Integration","description":"Experience integrating large language models or AI capabilities into consumer products, understanding prompt engineering, model API consumption, and LLM-powered feature development."}
- {"name":"Agent System Architecture","description":"Background building autonomous agents, workflow engines, or task automation systems that operate persistently across user sessions and maintain contextual understanding."}
- {"name":"Consumer Product Development","description":"Proven track record launching consumer-facing products from early prototypes through production iteration, including managing user feedback and product evolution."}
- {"name":"Observability & Monitoring","description":"Experience implementing comprehensive logging, tracing, metrics collection, and dashboarding to understand system behavior and diagnose issues in production environments."}
- {"name":"TypeScript/JavaScript","description":"Proficiency in modern JavaScript/TypeScript for building type-safe, scalable web applications with strong tooling ecosystems."}
- {"name":"Python","description":"Competency in Python for backend services, data processing, and AI/ML integration workflows common in AI-focused companies."}
- {"name":"Cloud Infrastructure","description":"Hands-on experience with cloud platforms like AWS, GCP, or Azure for computing, storage, deployment, and infrastructure automation."}

## Tech stack

### tools

- {"name":"Git/GitHub","description":"Version control and collaboration platform essential for managing code across distributed engineering teams."}
- {"name":"Docker","description":"Containerization platform for consistent deployments, microservices architecture, and infrastructure reproducibility."}
- {"name":"Kubernetes","description":"Container orchestration system for managing scalable, resilient deployments of microservices at production scale."}
- {"name":"Datadog/New Relic","description":"Observability platforms for application performance monitoring, distributed tracing, and production incident diagnostics."}

### others

- {"name":"GraphQL","description":"Query language and runtime for building efficient, flexible APIs with precise data fetching capabilities."}
- {"name":"REST APIs","description":"Architectural style for building scalable, stateless web services following HTTP standards and conventions."}
- {"name":"Message Queues","description":"Systems like RabbitMQ or AWS SQS for asynchronous task processing, event streaming, and reliable message delivery."}
- {"name":"CI/CD Pipelines","description":"Automated testing, building, and deployment infrastructure enabling rapid, safe feature releases."}

### databases

- {"name":"PostgreSQL","description":"Robust relational database for transactional data, complex queries, and ACID compliance in mission-critical systems."}
- {"name":"Redis","description":"In-memory data store for caching, session management, real-time features, and message queue operations."}
- {"name":"Vector Databases","description":"Specialized databases for semantic search and AI-powered retrieval, supporting embeddings from large language models."}

### languages

- {"name":"TypeScript","description":"Primary language for web frontend and backend services, providing type safety and scalability for full-stack applications."}
- {"name":"JavaScript","description":"Core web development language for interactive user interfaces and server-side runtime environments."}
- {"name":"Python","description":"Commonly used for backend services, API development, and integration with AI/ML systems at OpenAI."}

### frameworks

- {"name":"React","description":"Modern frontend framework for building interactive, responsive user interfaces with component-based architecture."}
- {"name":"Next.js","description":"Full-stack React framework enabling server-side rendering, API routes, and optimized production deployments."}
- {"name":"FastAPI","description":"Modern Python web framework for building high-performance APIs with automatic documentation and async support."}
- {"name":"Node.js","description":"JavaScript runtime for building scalable backend services and APIs with non-blocking I/O architecture."}

## Benefits

### benefits

- {"name":"Equity Package","description":"Substantial stock options in OpenAI with potential for significant long-term upside as a leading AI company. Equity vest over time contingent on continued employment, aligning employee and company interests."}
- {"name":"Comprehensive Health Insurance","description":"Medical, dental, and vision coverage for employees and eligible dependents. Plans include preventive care, specialist access, and mental health services."}
- {"name":"Retirement Planning","description":"401(k) retirement plan with employer matching to help build long-term financial security and retirement savings."}
- {"name":"Unlimited Paid Time Off","description":"Flexible vacation and paid time off policy encouraging employees to take time for rest, personal development, and recharge while maintaining productivity expectations."}
- {"name":"Professional Development","description":"Support for conferences, training, certifications, and educational opportunities to grow technical skills and stay current with emerging technologies and practices."}
- {"name":"Remote Work Flexibility","description":"Flexible work arrangements with option for remote work depending on role and team needs, balancing synchronous collaboration with individual contributor flexibility."}
- {"name":"Parental Benefits","description":"Paid parental leave for birth parents and non-birth parents, supporting work-life balance and family planning."}
- {"name":"Wellness Programs","description":"Fitness stipends, mental health resources, wellness coaching, and employee assistance programs supporting overall health and wellbeing."}

## Compensation

- **max:** 400000
- **min:** 200000
- **currency:** USD
- **stockOptions:** true

## Interview process

### steps

## Full description
**About the Team**

Dots is building personal AI agents that help people make progress on their goals, including when they are away from ChatGPT. These agents can learn preferences, maintain context, work across applications, and use cloud computers to carry out tasks.

Our team brings together product engineering, design, and research to turn frontier model capabilities into useful everyday experiences. We are defining how people delegate work, understand what an agent is doing, and stay in control. Engineers help shape both the product and the systems behind it, from early prototypes through launch and iteration.

**About the Role**

We are looking for Senior and Staff Full Stack Software Engineers to build Dots product experiences from the interface through the services that power them. You will help define how people delegate tasks to personal agents, follow their progress, and collaborate with them over time. This role combines hands-on product development with the systems work needed to make persistent, asynchronous agent experiences reliable.

**In this role, you will:**

* Build and launch features across web interfaces, APIs, backend services, and data models.
* Create workflows for task creation, progress updates, agent feedback, and results that remain coherent across sessions and devices.
* Translate emerging model capabilities into product prototypes with research, product, and design partners.
* Design clear interfaces between product surfaces and agent execution systems.
* Improve performance and reliability across the stack, including user-facing latency and recovery from partial failures.
* Own projects from early exploration through architecture, implementation, launch, and iteration based on user feedback.
* Help establish technical direction, testing practices, and observability as the product grows.

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

* Have significant experience building and shipping products across frontend and backend systems.
* Can move comfortably between user interfaces, service design, APIs, and data modeling.
* Bring strong product instincts and care about making complex capabilities understandable to users.
* Have taken ambiguous ideas from concept to production and made practical tradeoffs between iteration speed and long-term maintainability.
* Understand asynchronous workflows and can reason about state, consistency, and failure across system boundaries.
* Collaborate effectively with design, product, research, and engineering partners.
* Have owned complex engineering projects and helped other engineers make sound technical decisions.
* Experience launching new consumer products, building agent or workflow applications, or working in small teams with broad engineering ownership is especially relevant.
* Prior experience with AI or machine learning is helpful, but not required. We welcome experienced engineers who want to bring strong product and engineering judgment to a new category of software.

**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.