OpenAI· Applied AI Infrastructure· San Francisco
Software Engineer, Caching Infrastructure
Comp$230K – $385K
Classified Tasks (11)
Automate 0%Augment 82%Human-Only 18%
Augment (9)
AI assists, human decides
Design OpenAI’s multi-tenant caching platform architecture used across inference, identity, quota, and product experiences
technical
Build the caching platform components, services, and integrations required for production deployment
technical
Operate and maintain the caching platform in production to ensure continuous availability and correctness
operational
Implement automatic scaling mechanisms for the cache platform to adapt to workload changes
technical
Ensure high availability and multi-tenancy isolation of the caching platform
technical
Optimize cache performance to minimize tail latency
technical
Support a diverse range of caching use cases across products and teams
operational
Balance performance, durability, and cost when designing and evolving platform capabilities
analytical
Scale caching infrastructure to meet increasing workloads and tenant demands
operational
Human-Only (2)
Requires human judgment
Define the long-term vision and roadmap for caching as a core infrastructure capability
leadership
Collaborate with networking, observability, databases, and product teams to align platform requirements and integrations
communication
Job description
Software Engineer, Caching Infrastructure | OpenAI Careers ## Software Engineer, Caching Infrastructure Applied AI Infrastructure - San Francisco Apply now(opens in a new window) ### **About the Team** At OpenAI, we’re building safe and beneficial artificial general intelligence. We deploy our models through ChatGPT, our APIs, and other cutting-edge products. Behind the scenes, making these systems fast, reliable, and cost-efficient requires world-class infrastructure. The Caching Infrastructure team is responsible for building a caching layer that powers many critical use cases at OpenAI. We aim to provide a high-availability, multi-tenant cache platform that scales automatically with workload, minimizes tail latency, and supports a diverse range of use cases. We’re looking for an experienced engineer to help design and scale this critical infrastructure. The ideal candidate has deep experience in distributed caching systems (e.g., Redis, Memcached), networking fundamentals, and Kubernetes-based service orchestration. ### **In This Role, You Will:** * Design, build, and operate OpenAI’s multi-tenant caching platform used across inference, identity, quota, and product experiences. * Define the long-term vision and roadmap for caching as a core infra capability, balancing performance, durability, and cost. * Collaborate with other infra teams (e.g., networking, observability, databases) and product teams to ensure our caching platform meets their needs. ### **You Might Thrive In This Role If You:** * Have 5+ years of experience building and scaling distributed systems, with a strong focus on caching, load balancing, or storage systems. * Have deep expertise with Redis, Memcached, or similar solutions, including clustering, durability configurations, client-side connection patterns, and performance tuning. * Have production experience with Kubernetes, service meshes (e.g., Envoy), and autoscaling systems. * Think rigorously about latency, reliability, throughput, and cost in designing platform capabilities. * Thrive in a fast-paced environment and enjoy balancing pragmatic engineering with long-term technical excellence. **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 pr