Software Engineer, Monetization Data Systems
Backend Engineer · Senior · Full Time
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Role
What you'll do.
The Monetization Data Systems team at OpenAI seeks a Senior Software Engineer to design and operate reliable, scalable backend systems powering pricing, billing, ads, payments, and entitlements. This hands-on role requires 7+ years of production systems experience with deep expertise in distributed systems architecture, API design, and financial data integrity to enable product teams to launch and iterate on monetization products securely and efficiently.
Responsibilities
- Design and Operate Backend Services: Design, improve, and operate reliable, scalable backend services that power critical monetization platform capabilities including pricing, billing, ads, payments, and entitlements systems that serve millions of users.
- Architecture and Implementation of Monetization Data Workflows: Own end-to-end architecture and implementation of complex monetization data workflows, establish robust data contracts, and orchestrate integrations across product and business systems to ensure data accuracy and consistency.
- Establish System Guarantees: Define and enforce strong guarantees for correctness, availability, security, performance, reconciliation, and auditability across business-critical systems, particularly for financial and payment data.
- Build Reusable Platform Capabilities: Develop reusable platform capabilities, shared frameworks, and developer tooling that enable product teams to launch, measure, and iterate on monetization products quickly, safely, and with confidence.
- Cross-Functional Partnership and Translation: Partner with Product, Design, Data, Finance, Accounting, and Go-To-Market teams to translate customer needs and business requirements into robust, maintainable technical solutions.
- Technical Leadership and System Design: Lead technical design and delivery of complex cross-functional projects using Request for Comments (RFCs) and clear system designs to align partners, making sound architectural tradeoffs between velocity, scalability, reliability, and maintainability.
- Operational Excellence and Observability: Improve observability and operational excellence of critical services including monitoring, incident response, root-cause analysis, capacity planning, and long-term remediation strategies.
- Mentorship and Knowledge Sharing: Mentor other engineers, contribute to architecture and code reviews, write clear technical documentation, and share domain knowledge across teams to elevate the broader engineering organization's capabilities.
Qualifications
What we look for.
Technical
Production Backend Systems Experience
Minimum 7+ years of professional software engineering experience with deep expertise building and operating production software systems, backend services, or distributed systems at scale with proven reliability and performance optimization.
Programming Language Proficiency
High proficiency in at least one general-purpose programming language such as Go, Java, Python, Rust, or C++ with strong computer science fundamentals including algorithms, data structures, and systems design.
Distributed Systems Architecture
Strong fundamentals in distributed systems design including eventual consistency models, consensus algorithms, fault tolerance, and scalability patterns for systems serving millions of requests.
API Design and Data Modeling
Expert-level understanding of API design principles, data modeling strategies, schema design, and storage system trade-offs for building maintainable and extensible systems.
Event-Driven Architecture
Experience designing and implementing event-driven architectures, event streaming systems, message queues, and asynchronous processing patterns for complex workflows.
Correctness and Reliability Engineering
Proven ability to design systems with rigorous correctness requirements, including transaction management, idempotency guarantees, and comprehensive testing strategies for business-critical systems.
Security and Access Control
Strong understanding of security principles, encryption, authentication, authorization, and access control mechanisms for protecting sensitive financial and customer data.
Education
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or Related Field
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Mathematics, or related technical discipline with strong foundational knowledge in computer science principles.
Advanced Computer Science Knowledge
Equivalent professional experience demonstrating mastery of advanced concepts in distributed systems, systems design, and software architecture can substitute for formal degree requirements.
Experience
Production Software Systems
7+ years building, operating, and scaling production software systems with proven track record of designing systems that handle millions of requests with high reliability and performance.
Backend Service Development
Extensive experience developing backend services, microservices architectures, and platform systems that serve as critical infrastructure for product teams.
Cross-Functional Collaboration
Demonstrated ability to collaborate effectively with Product, Design, Data, Finance, and other non-engineering teams to translate business requirements into technical solutions.
System Design Leadership
Experience leading technical design discussions, conducting architecture reviews, and mentoring other engineers in system design principles and best practices.
Skills
Required
Distributed Systems Design
Expert ability to architect distributed systems handling high throughput and complexity with considerations for consistency, availability, partition tolerance, and fault tolerance.
Backend Service Development
Proficiency building robust, scalable backend services with attention to performance optimization, resource efficiency, and operational reliability.
Data Modeling and Storage Systems
Strong expertise in relational and non-relational data modeling, database optimization, and selecting appropriate storage solutions for different use cases.
API Design
Experience designing clean, intuitive APIs that are maintainable, versioned, and documented with clear contracts for client systems.
Systems Thinking
Ability to understand complex systems holistically, trace data flows, identify bottlenecks, and optimize end-to-end user and business experiences.
Production Operations
Deep understanding of monitoring, alerting, logging, incident response, and operational excellence for maintaining reliable production systems.
Technical Communication
Strong ability to explain complex technical concepts to both engineers and non-technical stakeholders, write clear RFCs, and document architectural decisions.
Testing and Quality Assurance
Expertise in designing comprehensive testing strategies including unit testing, integration testing, chaos engineering, and production validation for business-critical systems.
Preferred
Monetization and Billing Systems
Nice to havePrior experience building pricing, billing, subscription, or payments systems and understanding the unique challenges of financial correctness and reconciliation.
Ads and Advertising Technology
Nice to haveExperience with advertising platforms, ad serving systems, or advertising-related backend infrastructure and analytics.
Financial Data and Compliance
Nice to haveFamiliarity with financial correctness requirements, reconciliation processes, audit trails, compliance standards, and regulatory requirements for financial systems.
Event Streaming and Message Processing
Nice to haveHands-on experience with Kafka, Kinesis, or similar event streaming platforms for building high-throughput, low-latency data pipelines.
High-Scale Transactional Workflows
Nice to haveExperience designing and implementing complex transactional workflows, saga patterns, and eventual consistency solutions for critical business processes.
Internal Platforms and Developer Tools
Nice to haveBackground building internal platforms, shared frameworks, libraries, or developer tooling designed to enable other engineering teams.
Cloud Infrastructure and DevOps
Nice to haveExperience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) and infrastructure-as-code practices for deploying and managing distributed systems at scale.
AI and Machine Learning Systems
Nice to haveFamiliarity with machine learning infrastructure, serving systems, or analytics platforms used in AI-driven products like those at OpenAI.
Tech stack
Languages
Frameworks
Databases
Tools
Other
Compensation
Pay and benefits.
Base·USD 293,000 – 385,000
Equity·Stock options
Benefits
Equity Compensation
Substantial equity package aligned with company performance, providing long-term upside participation in OpenAI's growth.
Health Insurance
Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance coverage for employees and eligible dependents.
Retirement Planning
401(k) retirement savings plan with employer matching to support long-term financial planning.
Paid Time Off
Competitive paid time off policy including vacation days, sick leave, and holidays to promote work-life balance.
Professional Development
Support for continuous learning through conference attendance, training programs, and educational opportunities to advance technical skills.
Remote Work Flexibility
Flexible work arrangements supporting both remote and collaborative office work to accommodate individual preferences and productivity styles.
Mental Health and Wellness
Comprehensive wellness programs including mental health support, counseling services, and wellness initiatives.
Parental Leave
Generous parental leave policies supporting employees during significant life events.
Commuter Benefits
Transportation and commuter benefits programs for employees working in or commuting to office locations.
Internal Mobility
Opportunities to move between teams and projects, accelerating career growth and expanding expertise across the organization.
Process
Interview steps.
- 01
Initial Screening
Preliminary conversation with recruiter to assess background, experience level, and alignment with team needs. Expect discussion of your production systems experience and technical interests.
- 02
Technical Screening
First technical interview focused on distributed systems concepts, API design principles, and your approach to solving ambiguous problems. Be prepared to discuss a complex system you've designed or operated.
- 03
System Design Interview
In-depth system design round where you'll architect a monetization-related system (e.g., billing, payments, or pricing system). Interviewers will evaluate your ability to think through scalability, consistency, and reliability trade-offs.
- 04
Technical Deep Dive
Focused discussion on your expertise with backend services, production operations, and handling of business-critical systems. Share specific examples of systems you've operated and improved.
- 05
Cross-Functional Collaboration Assessment
Interview with cross-functional team members (Product, Finance, Data) to assess your ability to translate business requirements into technical solutions and work effectively with non-engineering partners.
- 06
Leadership and Communication Round
Discussion with senior engineers or engineering leadership focused on technical communication, mentorship philosophy, and your vision for raising engineering standards.
- 07
Behavioral and Culture Fit
Final round assessing alignment with OpenAI values, your approach to ambiguity, career motivation, and commitment to building systems that benefit humanity.
- 08
Executive Conversation
Optional discussion with engineering leadership or team lead to discuss team vision, long-term career opportunities, and strategic technical direction at OpenAI.
Full posting
Original listing.
About the Team
The Monetization Data Systems team builds the trusted data and product systems that power how the company develops, measures, and improves monetization products. We bring together product usage, pricing, billing, ads, payments, and financial data to help Product, Engineering, Finance, and GTM teams make better decisions and deliver reliable customer experiences.
We work at the intersection of data engineering, product engineering, platform engineering, Finance, and GTM. Our goal is to turn complex monetization and financial data into accurate, explainable, and timely data products while building systems that scale with the growth and complexity of the business.
About the Role
We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer to design and build the next generation of our monetization data platform. You will own high-impact platform systems end to end, from architecture and implementation through testing, deployment, observability, and ongoing operation.
This is a hands-on role for an engineer who enjoys solving ambiguous customer and business problems, designing durable systems, and partnering closely with Product, Data, Finance, Accounting, and GTM. You will help define technical direction, raise the engineering bar, and turn monetization opportunities into reliable, scalable product experiences and platform capabilities.
In this role, you will:
Design, improve, and operate reliable, scalable backend services that power pricing, billing, ads, payments, entitlements, and other monetization platform capabilities.
Own the architecture and implementation of critical workflows relevant to monetization data, data contracts, and integrations across product and business systems.
Establish strong guarantees for correctness, availability, security, performance, reconciliation, and auditability across business-critical systems.
Build reusable platform capabilities and developer tools that enable product teams to launch, measure, and iterate on monetization products quickly and safely.
Partner with Product, Design, Data, Finance, Accounting, and GTM teams to translate customer and business needs into robust technical solutions.
Lead the technical design and delivery of complex, cross-functional projects, using clear system designs and RFCs to align partners before implementation and making sound tradeoffs among product velocity, scalability, reliability, and maintainability.
Improve the observability and operational excellence of critical services, including monitoring, incident response, root-cause analysis, capacity planning, and long-term remediation.
Mentor other engineers, contribute to architecture and code reviews, write clear documentation, and share knowledge across teams to elevate the broader engineering organization.
You might thrive in this role if you:
Possess a minimum of 7+ years of professional software engineering experience with deep experience building and operating production software systems, backend services, or distributed systems at scale.
Are highly proficient in at least one general-purpose programming language such as Go, Java, Python, Rust, or C++, with strong computer science fundamentals.
Have strong fundamentals in API design, data modeling, storage systems, distributed systems, and event-driven architecture.
Have designed systems with rigorous correctness, reliability, observability, security, privacy, or access-control requirements.
Can collaborate with cross-functional partners to identify needs, navigate ambiguity, and drive progress from problem definition through delivery.
Bring a product-oriented mindset and communicate clearly with technical and non-technical partners, translating customer and business problems into simple, scalable system designs.
Care deeply about correctness and operational reliability while maintaining a practical bias toward delivering customer and business value.
Bring a strong sense of engineering excellence, using clear thinking, sound judgment, and a design-before-implementation approach to create maintainable systems.
Command strong sense of engineering excellence, contribute to a design-before-implementation approach with clear documentation, and knowledge sharing across teams to elevate the broader engineering organization.
Nice to have:
Experience with monetization, pricing, billing, ads, payments, entitlements, subscriptions, or other financial products.
Familiarity with financial correctness, reconciliation, compliance, or audit requirements.
Experience with high-scale distributed systems, transactional workflows, event streaming, or payment infrastructure.
Experience building internal platforms, shared frameworks, APIs, or developer tooling used by other engineering teams.
Monetization or finance domain experience is helpful but not required. We value strong software engineering judgment, systems thinking, and the ability to learn a complex domain quickly.
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.
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