How to apply for Software Engineer, Infrastructure Security

About OpenAI

OpenAI is a frontier AI research and product company with teams working on alignment, policy, and security. The company posts specific opportunities it considers high impact, and it has published a career review discussing concerns about working at a frontier AI lab. Security is described as foundational to OpenAI's stated mission of ensuring that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.

About the role

This role sits on the Infrastructure Security team, which protects OpenAI's GPU supercomputing clusters, multi-cloud infrastructure, datacenters, networking, storage, and the services powering frontier AI models. You would build foundational services such as authentication systems, egress/ingress proxies, access brokers, and key management platforms. These systems carry highly sensitive model weights and user data and must stay reliable under intense scale and adversarial pressure.

A typical day

The job description does not specify a daily routine, so ask the team in interviews how work is divided between building new services and operating existing ones. Based on the charter, expect time spent designing and writing code for foundational security services, reviewing how those services behave under load, and coordinating with research and product teams that depend on them.

Who OpenAI is looking for

• Has built production infrastructure services (authentication, proxies, access brokers, or key management) with high reliability and scalability requirements.
• Understands security from bare metal and firmware through Kubernetes, service meshes, and data pathways, not just one layer of the stack.
• Writes software with strong craftsmanship and treats reliability and adversarial resilience as engineering requirements, not afterthoughts.
• Can operate in a role that is technical in what it builds but operational in how it executes, supporting every product and research effort at the company.

Tips for this application

• Read OpenAI's career review on working at a frontier AI lab before applying, and be ready to explain your own reasoning about the tradeoffs it raises.
• Tailor your materials to infrastructure security specifically: name concrete systems you have built (auth, proxies, access brokers, KMS) and the scale they ran at.
• Note in your application that this is the specific OpenAI opportunity you are applying to, since the company posts selected roles and does not necessarily recommend other positions there.
• Show evidence of building security systems that hold up under adversarial pressure and intense scale, not just security policy or compliance work.
• Be explicit about remote (US) work experience and how you collaborate across a distributed team on critical foundational services.

What to cover in your cover letter

Describe specific foundational services you have designed and built, such as authentication systems, egress/ingress proxies, access brokers, or key management platforms. Explain how you handled reliability and scalability under intense load or adversarial pressure. Connect your work to protecting sensitive data and infrastructure like GPU clusters, multi-cloud environments, and Kubernetes. State your reasoning about working at a frontier AI company, referencing the concerns OpenAI itself has published.

Research before applying

• Read OpenAI's career review on working at a frontier AI lab and form a view on the concerns it describes.
• Study OpenAI's published security-related work and any public descriptions of its infrastructure, research, and product environment.
• Learn what GPU supercomputing clusters, multi-cloud infrastructure, and service meshes look like in practice at frontier scale.
• Check what OpenAI has said publicly about its mission, alignment, policy, and security teams to understand how this role fits.

Likely interview topics

Based on the job description, expect questions about:

• How you would design an authentication system or access broker for a multi-cloud, GPU-heavy environment.
• Tradeoffs in building egress/ingress proxies that must stay reliable under intense scale and adversarial pressure.
• Key management design for protecting highly sensitive model weights and user data.
• How you approach security across layers, from bare-metal hardware and firmware to Kubernetes and service meshes.
• Your reasoning about working at a frontier AI company, including the concerns raised in OpenAI's career review.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Applying with generic security experience that does not address infrastructure security systems like auth, proxies, access brokers, or key management.
• Ignoring the ethical concerns OpenAI itself publishes about working at a frontier AI lab, or having no considered position on them.
• Treating this as a policy or compliance role rather than a hands-on software engineering role building critical foundational services.