Principal Security Engineer - Infrastructure Security
At OpenAI, our mission is audacious: to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. At the heart of achieving this lies an uncompromising commitment to security. As we push the boundaries of AI, safeguarding our cutting-edge technology, brilliant people, and transformative products is not just a priority – it's foundational.
About the Team: Securing the Frontier of AI Prioritizing for maximum impact. About the Role: Principal Infrastructure Security Engineer GPU Supercomputing Clusters: Securing the immense computational power driving frontier AI models. From the bare-metal hardware and firmware up through Kubernetes clusters, service meshes, and critical data access pathways, you will be instrumental in architecting and implementing robust security controls. As a Principal Engineer, you will be a technical visionary, setting strategic direction and spearheading the execution of high-impact infrastructure security programs. You will partner extensively across OpenAI to deliver durable, scalable controls that elevate our security posture to new heights. In This Role, You Will: Own Security Outcomes: Take end-to-end ownership of security for one or more critical infrastructure domains, defining multi-quarter strategy, roadmap, and delivery. You Will Thrive in This Role If You Have: Deep Security Expertise: A profound understanding of security principles, best practices, and common vulnerabilities, coupled with strong security judgment in ambiguous situations. About OpenAI
The Security team at OpenAI operates at the intersection of innovation and defense. We are a technically driven, operationally focused team dedicated to supporting all research and product development across OpenAI. Our core tenets guide us:
Empowering researchers to innovate fearlessly.
Proactively preparing for future transformative technologies.
Cultivating a robust and pervasive security culture.
We are seeking an exceptional Principal Security Engineer to join our critical Infrastructure Security (InfraSec) team. This isn't just a security role; it's an opportunity to define and build the defenses for the most advanced AI infrastructure in the world. The InfraSec team is entrusted with protecting the very foundations of OpenAI’s research and production environments.
Your scope will span a formidable landscape:
Multi-Cloud Infrastructure: Defending complex deployments across leading cloud providers.
Datacenters & Networking: Hardening our physical and logical perimeters.
Storage & Critical Services: Safeguarding highly sensitive model weights and user data at rest and in transit.
Engineer Advanced Defenses: Design and build sophisticated security controls across diverse layers including physical hardware, firmware/BMC, operating systems, Kubernetes, networks, and CI/CD pipelines, directly countering sophisticated adversaries and insider threats.
Lead Cross-Functional Initiatives: Drive complex, cross-functional programs to deploy significant security enhancements and control changes across broad-scale infrastructure, expertly balancing robust security guarantees with reliability and development velocity.
Embrace a Generalist Mindset: Apply a versatile approach to security control development, leveraging a blend of deep security expertise and broad technical skillsets to adapt to rapidly evolving challenges.
Drive Security by Design: Lead and facilitate comprehensive threat modeling and design reviews for major infrastructure changes, ensuring strong security foundations and operational excellence from inception.
Shape Security Culture: Mentor and elevate engineers across InfraSec and partner teams, actively contributing to a strong, proactive security culture through expert guidance, thoughtful reviews, and technical leadership.
Proactive & Innovative Approach: A demonstrated ability to proactively identify and remediate security gaps or inefficiencies, leveraging automation and tooling to scale solutions.
AI Curiosity: Expertise and genuine curiosity about leveraging frontier models and intelligent agents to effectively solve complex security challenges.
Proven Leadership: A track record of successfully leading large, cross-organizational initiatives from conceptualization to rollout, adept at navigating tradeoffs, driving alignment, and delivering measurable risk reduction.
Cloud Security Mastery: Deep expertise in securing major cloud platforms (e.g., Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure), with a particular focus on multi-cloud networks, infrastructure, and designing cloud-agnostic systems.
On-Premise Experience: Hands-on experience securing on-premise deployments and datacenters, from initial construction to multi-tenant operational use.
Container & Orchestration Security: Strong familiarity with container security, orchestration security, and robust authentication/authorization mechanisms.
Analytical Acumen: Superior analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to think critically and objectively assess intricate security risks.
Exceptional Communication: Excellent communication skills, capable of effectively conveying complex security concepts to executive, technical, and non-technical stakeholders.
Collaborative Spirit: Genuine excitement for collaborating with cross-functional teams to build secure, reliable systems that scale globally and underpin humanity's most advanced AI research.
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.
To notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant, please submit a report through this form. No response will be provided to inquiries unrelated to job posting compliance.
We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link.
OpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy
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.