Software Engineer, API Frontiers

Skills

About the Role

You will build and operate the backend services behind the Responses API, shaping API behavior and bringing new research capabilities into production. You will make long-running agent workflows dependable and fast, manage staged rollouts, improve performance and tail latency, and turn developer feedback and production failures into lasting improvements.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience building and operating backend services or developer-facing APIs in production
• Strong software engineering fundamentals, with knowledge of distributed systems, concurrency, and asynchronous execution
• Ability to diagnose production failures and performance bottlenecks using observability data and profiling
• Product judgment and developer empathy
• Experience owning ambiguous technical problems
• Clear communication and collaboration across engineering, research, product, and safety
• Experience with Rust, streaming protocols or WebSockets, or long-running workflow systems is a plus

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate APIs and backend services that bring frontier model capabilities to developers
• Partner with Research, Safety, Codex, and API teams to define API behavior and deliver safe, staged launches
• Build API capabilities for agent workflows, including task delegation, context sharing, and parallel execution
• Strengthen long-running request reliability across timeouts, cancellation, streaming, and background execution
• Improve request-processing performance and tail latency through profiling, efficient systems code, and persistent connections
• Turn developer feedback and production failures into better observability, diagnostics, and product improvements

Benefits

• Equity
• Performance-related bonus
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance with employer HSA contributions
• Pre-tax Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and commuter accounts
• 401(k) with employer match
• Paid parental leave (up to 24 weeks birth parents, 20 weeks non-birthing parents)
• Paid medical and caregiver leave (up to 8 weeks)
• Flexible PTO for exempt employees; up to 15 days for non-exempt
• 13+ paid company holidays and company office closures
• Paid sick or safe time
• Mental health and wellness support
• Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage
• Annual learning and development stipend
• Daily meals in offices and meal delivery credits
• Relocation support for eligible employees
• Charitable donation matching and wellness stipends