OpenAI Software Engineer on OpenAI's Privacy Engineering team building internal tools and data pipelines for lawful data access request workflows. Develop backend systems to ensure accurate, efficient, and auditable handling of sensitive legal data.
Responsibilities
We’re looking for a full-stack Software Engineer to build the internal tools and data pipelines that power lawful data access request workflows and Legal Operations. You will work across product and data systems to make authorized retrieval and case handling accurate, efficient, and auditable. This role is well suited to someone who enjoys translating ambiguous operational requirements into durable systems, cares deeply about sensitive-data handling, and wants to improve both technical reliability and the day-to-day experience of the people operating these workflows.
This role is based in San Francisco, CA, with two additional locations under consideration: London, UK, and Dublin, Ireland. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.
Design, build, and operate backend systems and workflow tooling for the full lifecycle of lawful data access requests, from intake and scoping through authorized retrieval, review, preparation, and audit.
Build reliable data pipelines and interfaces across products and data stores so authorized teams can locate and handle the right records accurately and reproducibly.
Implement least-privilege access, approval gates, provenance, audit trails, data minimization, and safe failure modes for sensitive workflows.
Partner with Legal and Legal Operations to translate legal and operational requirements into clear technical designs and intuitive operator experiences.
Identify responsible automation opportunities that reduce repetitive work while preserving human review, judgment, and accountability.
Own production systems through testing, observability, incident response, documentation, and continuous reliability improvements.
Help define the architecture and roadmap for reusable privacy and legal-infrastructure foundations as OpenAI’s products and obligations evolve.
You might thrive in this role if you:
Have experience building or operating systems for lawful data access requests and understand the domain’s legal-process lifecycle, privacy and security constraints, auditability requirements, and operational sensitivities.
Strong backend engineering fundamentals and experience building production services or data-intensive systems.
