About the job
About the Team
Join OpenAI's Privacy Engineering team, where we operate at the vital crossroads of Security, Privacy, Legal, and Core Infrastructure. Our mission is to develop cutting-edge data infrastructure and systems that empower our privacy, legal, and security teams to operate securely, swiftly, and at scale. We adhere to principles of defensibility by default, enabling impactful research, and fostering a robust security culture in preparation for transformative technologies.
About the Role
We are seeking a talented Software Engineer to design and implement technical systems that facilitate legal compliance workflows, including secure data processing and document review. In this role, you will collaborate closely with Legal, Security, IT, and engineering teams to translate legal processes into actionable technical workflows. This position is perfect for an engineer passionate about large-scale data challenges and who understands the meticulousness required in ensuring compliance.
Located in the vibrant city of San Francisco, we offer relocation assistance for qualified candidates.
Key Responsibilities:
Design and maintain scalable data storage pipelines.
Develop search and discovery services (e.g., Spark/Databricks, index layers, metadata catalogs) tailored to partner team requirements.
Automate secure data transfers, including encryption, checksumming, and auditing exports to reviewers.
Establish secure compute environments that balance usability with stringent security controls.
Implement monitoring and KPIs to ensure accountability of data holds and productions.
Work cross-functionally to document SOPs, threat models, and chain-of-custody documentation that can withstand scrutiny.
Ideal Candidates Will:
Possess practical experience in building or operating large-scale data-lake or backup systems (Azure, AWS, GCP).
Be proficient with Terraform or Pulumi, CI/CD processes, and capable of converting ad-hoc legal requests into repeatable pipelines.
Be comfortable working with discovery workflows (legal holds, enterprise document collections, secure review) or eager to quickly gain expertise.
Effectively communicate technical concepts—from storage governance to block-ID APIs—to interdisciplinary teams such as Legal and Engineering.

