Principal Offensive Security Engineer
About the Team
At OpenAI, security is paramount. We're the guardians of our groundbreaking technology, dedicated to ensuring AI benefits all of humanity. Our Security team is a blend of technical expertise and operational excellence, committed to supporting every facet of OpenAI's research and product development. We prioritize impact, empower researchers, anticipate future technological shifts, and foster a strong security culture.
About the Role
Ready to redefine offensive security? As a Principal Offensive Security Engineer, you'll be at the forefront of fortifying OpenAI's defenses. This isn't just another red team gig; it's a chance to dive deep, craft innovative attack simulations, collaborate closely with defensive teams, and directly influence our strategic security roadmap.
Imagine actively driving vulnerability resolution, automating offensive techniques with cutting-edge tools, and leveraging your unique attacker's perspective to shape our overall security strategy. If you're passionate about pushing the boundaries of offensive security in a dynamic environment, this role is for you.
Your primary focus will be the continuous, rigorous testing of our agent-powered products like Codex and Operator. These systems are uniquely valuable targets due to their rapid evolution, access to sensitive user actions, and expansive attack surfaces. You'll play a critical role in securing our agents by identifying realistic vulnerabilities that emerge from the complex interactions between applications, infrastructure, and the underlying models.
What You'll Do:
Continuously hunt for vulnerabilities within the intricate interactions between applications, infrastructure, and models powering our agentic products.
Orchestrate open-scope red and purple team operations, simulating real-world attack scenarios.
Collaborate proactively with defensive security teams to strengthen detection, response, and mitigation capabilities.
Conduct in-depth penetration testing across our diverse suite of products.
Harness advanced automation and OpenAI technologies to optimize your offensive security endeavors.
Present insightful, actionable findings with clarity and impact, driving positive change across the organization.
Influence security strategy by providing attacker-centric insights into risk and threat modeling.
What You'll Bring:
7+ years of hands-on red team experience, or demonstrably equivalent expertise.
Deep expertise in conducting offensive security operations within modern technology organizations.
Experience designing, developing, or security testing of AI-powered systems.
Experience working finding, exploiting and mitigating common vulnerabilities in AI systems like prompt injection, leaking sensitive data, confused deputies, and dynamically generated UI components.
Exceptional skill in code review, with a knack for identifying novel and subtle vulnerabilities.
Proven experience performing offensive security assessments in at least one hyperscaler cloud environment (Azure preferred).
Demonstrated mastery assessing complex technology stacks, including:
Highly customized Kubernetes clusters
Container environments
CI/CD pipelines
GitHub security
macOS and Linux operating systems
Data science tooling and environments
Python-based web services
React-based frontend applications
Strong intuitive understanding of trust boundaries and risk assessment in dynamic contexts.
Excellent coding skills, capable of writing robust tools and automation for offensive operations.
Ability to communicate complex technical concepts effectively through compelling storytelling.
Proven track record of not just finding vulnerabilities but actively contributing to solutions in complex codebases.
Bonus Points:
Background or expertise in AI or data science.
Prior experience working in tech startups or fast-paced technology environments.
Experience in related disciplines such as Software Engineering (SWE), Detection Engineering, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), Security Engineering, or IT Infrastructure.
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.
Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with applicable law, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act. 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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