Research Engineer, Privacy

OpenAI, Inc.

Job Overview

Location

San Francisco

Job Type

Full-time

Full Job Description

📋 Description

• Design and prototype privacy-preserving machine-learning algorithms (e.g., differential privacy, secure aggregation, federated learning) that can be deployed at OpenAI scale.
• Measure and strengthen model robustness against privacy attacks such as membership inference, model inversion, and data memorization leaks—balancing utility with provable guarantees.
• Develop internal libraries, evaluation suites, and documentation that make cutting-edge privacy techniques accessible to engineering and research teams.
• Lead deep-dive investigations into the privacy–performance trade-offs of large models, publishing insights that inform model-training and product-safety decisions.
• Define and codify privacy standards, threat models, and audit procedures that guide the entire ML lifecycle—from dataset curation to post-deployment monitoring.
• Collaborate across Security, Policy, Product, and Legal to translate evolving regulatory requirements into practical technical safeguards and tooling.
• You might thrive in this role if you:
• Have hands-on research or production experience with PETs.
• Are fluent in modern deep-learning stacks (PyTorch/JAX) and comfortable turning cutting-edge papers into reliable, well-tested code.
• Enjoy stress-testing models—probing them for private data leakage—and can explain complex attack vectors to non-experts with clarity.
• Have a track record of publishing (or implementing) novel privacy or security work and relish bridging the gap between academia and real-world systems.
• Thrive in fast-moving, cross-disciplinary environments where you alternate between open-ended research and shipping production features under tight deadlines.
• Communicate crisply, document rigorously, and care deeply about building AI systems that respect user privacy while pushing the frontiers of capability.
• 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.

🎯 Requirements

• Have hands-on research or production experience with PETs.
• Be fluent in modern deep-learning stacks (PyTorch/JAX) and comfortable turning cutting-edge papers into reliable, well-tested code.
• Enjoy stress-testing models—probing them for private data leakage—and can explain complex attack vectors to non-experts with clarity.

🏖️ Benefits

• Relocation assistance is available.
• OpenAI is an equal opportunity employer.
• We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities.

Skills & Technologies

PyTorch

Onsite

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OpenAI, Inc.

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About OpenAI, Inc.

OpenAI is a San Francisco-based artificial intelligence research and deployment company founded in 2015. It develops large-scale AI models such as GPT, DALL-E, and Codex, providing cloud APIs and consumer applications like ChatGPT. Originally established as a non-profit, it later created a capped-profit subsidiary to attract capital while maintaining its mission to ensure artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.

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