Software Engineer, Habitat (Online Data)

About this role

Join OpenAI's Online Data team to build and operate Habitat, a full-stack database platform powering OpenAI's products. You'll own critical distributed systems components including storage, caching, routing, and privacy enforcement, optimizing for massive scale, low latency, and high reliability.

What you'll do

• Design and build core database abstractions for storage, caching, routing, CDC, and access control
• Own major system components end-to-end from API design through production operations
• Optimize latency, correctness, and cost efficiency for high-QPS production workloads
• Develop instrumentation, debugging tools, and developer-focused features
• Collaborate with internal teams to understand requirements and ship pragmatic solutions
• Participate in on-call rotation and continuously improve reliability and performance

What they're looking for

• Distributed systems design and operation at scale
• Rust and/or Python programming
• Database, caching, or data systems experience
• Tail latency optimization and global performance tuning
• Multi-region systems and consistency design
• Platform API design for diverse teams
• Systems judgment and tradeoff analysis
• Developer experience and API design