Software Engineer, API SDK

About the Team

Our team brings OpenAI’s most capable technology to the world through our developer platform: the OpenAI API. As the leading AI development platform, our API is used by millions of developers and the majority of enterprises around the world, and powers the majority of AI applications that you may use on a daily basis. The platform supports everything from simple model calls to stateful, multimodal, tool-using applications through the Responses API, Agents SDK, Realtime API, and more. Our SDKs turn that fast-moving platform into reliable, idiomatic developer experiences across languages.

About the Role

We are looking for a software engineer to help build the official SDKs that power the OpenAI API. Currently offered in Python, Node.js, Golang, Java, and Ruby – our SDKs are some of the most popular in the world. You will help shape the developer experience for all new API features, as well as all future versions of our APIs. We’re looking for engineers who are deeply immersed in AI-native development: people who actively build with Codex and other coding agents, have developed agentic applications or developer tools, and bring strong, experience-backed opinions about OpenAI’s APIs. You’ll pair that firsthand product intuition with meticulous SDK design to improve how developers build with our platform. Prior experience building SDKs is lovely, but not absolutely necessary.

In this role, you will:

• Define and implement the SDK experience for all new API features, as well as all future versions of our API.

• Build and experiment with agentic applications, developer tools, and coding-agent workflows using Codex and OpenAI’s APIs, translating firsthand experience into better SDK abstractions, API ergonomics, and developer experiences.

• Build and maintain our systems to make SDK maintenance and generation streamlined and automated.

• Contribute to our SDK strategy and roadmap, including which languages to support and what features to support.

• Collaborate closely with the rest of the API team, our Developer Experience team, and our GTM team to make our SDKs the best in the world.

• Work directly with developers adding features, fixing issues, and contributing to documentation.

You might thrive in this role if you:

• 7+ years of professional engineering experience (excluding internships) in relevant roles at tech and product-driven companies.

• Have deep, hands-on experience using Codex and other coding agents to build and ship software.

• Have built agentic tools or AI-powered systems and understand practical considerations such as tool use, orchestration, evaluation, and reliability.

• Have built directly with OpenAI’s APIs and SDKs and can articulate specific opinions about their strengths, limitations, and opportunities for improvement.

• Love building for other developers, and thrive on feedback from opinionated users.

• Thrive working in the open source community, and love engaging directly with developers.

• Can thrive and operate independently in a fast-paced environment with ambiguous requirements and goals.

• Are an engineer at heart, but are willing to lean into product decisions.

• Have experience maintaining SDKs or building SDK-generation software.

Compensation Range: $293K - $385K USD

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity. 

We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.

Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

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At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.