Software Engineer, Monetization Product & Platform

Role details

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 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 research breakthroughs into real-world systems at global scale. ABOUT THE ROLE We’re looking for an experienced Software Engineer to help build the core monetization and ads systems at OpenAI. This is a foundational role responsible for designing and implementing the infrastructure, APIs, and user-facing experiences that will power OpenAI’s next-generation monetization products—including ads. You’ll work across the full technical stack to architect, build, and ship 0→1 systems that are robust, safe, and scalable. You will collaborate deeply with Product, Design, and Research to define the future of monetized AI experiences and ensure these systems meet OpenAI’s highest standards for safety, privacy, and policy alignment. This role is exclusively based across our San Francisco and Seattle sites. We offer relocation assistance to new employees. IN THIS ROLE, YOU WILL: - Design, build, and scale the core infrastructure behind OpenAI’s monetization and ads products - Develop advertiser-facing APIs and tools that enable the creation, management, and measurement of ads - Build integrations with external partners and help create enterprise-grade monetization products - Architect distributed systems and services that operate at massive scale with strong reliability, usability, privacy, and performance guarantees - Work closely with Product, Research, and Design to translate product requirements into high-quality technical solutions - 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 monetization and ads platforms - Maintain high engineering rigor through strong testing, documentation, and operational best practices - Uphold the highest levels of safety, privacy, fairness, and policy compliance across all monetization systems - Help continuously refine engineering processes, culture, and best practices within a fast-moving, multidisciplinary team YOU MIGHT THRIVE IN THIS ROLE IF YOU: - Have 7+ years of experience building high-scale consumer, enterprise, or ads-related systems - Have a track record of architecting and delivering complex distributed systems with high reliability and performance requirements - Are comfortable navigating ambiguous product spaces and contributing to technical roadmaps and long-term direction - 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 in ads systems, marketplaces, or other monetization-heavy domains LOCATION This role is exclusively based in our San Francisco HQ. We offer relocation assistance to new employees. 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