Level

OpenAI

Principal Software Engineer, ChatGPT Education and Learning

OpenAI is hiring a Principal Software Engineer, ChatGPT Education and Learning in San Francisco, United States. It pays $459k-$536k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on OpenAI.

Level's read on this job

  • Works on AI ●●●○ is how Level rates this software engineer role: the daily work is on AI products, without building the model.
  • Pay on this posting starts 173% higher than the typical software engineer posting on Level.
  • The posting mentions AI research among its tools and skills.
  • OpenAI has 810 other open roles on Level.
  • Posted in the last few days.

AI in this role

ai-research
About the Team

The ChatGPT Learning team creates the next generation of learning experiences within ChatGPT. Millions of people use ChatGPT each week to explore concepts, practice skills, and work through challenges, making learning one of the platform’s largest consumer use cases.

We want ChatGPT to support sustained learning and progress over time, beyond answering individual questions. We’re exploring how AI can make powerful learning tools more accessible, helping people understand the world, develop skills, and pursue their goals.

Our work brings together product engineering, design, AI research, and education to serve learners around the world.

About the Role

As a Principal Software Engineer on the ChatGPT Learning team, you will set technical direction and lead the design and development of products that help millions of people learn with ChatGPT.

You’ll remain hands-on across the stack, building polished interfaces and scalable backend services. Working closely with product managers, designers, researchers, and platform teams, you’ll bring new model capabilities into everyday learning experiences.

You’ll drive product and design decisions alongside your cross-functional partners, helping define what we build, how it works, and how it serves learners. We’re looking for an engineer with strong product judgment who can turn ambiguous opportunities into clear direction, lead complex initiatives from concept through launch, and raise the quality of the team’s technical work.

This position is based in San Francisco or New York City, with three days each week in the office. Relocation assistance is available to new employees.

What You’ll Do
  • Lead end-to-end development of learning experiences in ChatGPT, from early exploration through production and iteration.

  • Drive product and design decisions with product managers and designers, bringing technical insight, user feedback, and sound judgment to priorities and tradeoffs.

  • Set technical direction for complex initiatives and guide architecture decisions that support rapid experimentation and long-term reliability.

  • Build multimodal learning capabilities that combine text, images, voice, and interactive interfaces.

  • Develop scalable services and APIs to support learning features throughout ChatGPT.

  • Work with researchers, platform teams, designers, and engineers to prototype ideas and bring new AI capabilities to users.

  • Improve performance, reliability, and usability across ChatGPT’s learning surfaces, using experiments and user feedback to guide improvements.

  • Support other engineers through mentorship, code reviews, and clear technical guidance.

You Might Thrive Here If You
  • Have 10+ years of software engineering experience, with a track record of shipping high-quality products across the full stack.

  • Have led complex technical initiatives and made architecture decisions that balance product needs, development speed, and maintainability.

  • Have experience driving product and design decisions in close partnership with product managers and designers.

  • Enjoy building consumer products and taking ownership from initial concept through production.

  • Bring clarity to ambiguous problems and translate them into practical product solutions.

  • Have strong product engineering instincts and care deeply about the quality of the user experience.

  • Have experience building interactive educational tools or learning products.

  • Have experience developing AI-powered applications or systems built around large language models.

  • Want to build products with meaningful global impact and expand access to education and learning opportunities.

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.

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.

How we rate this

Principal Software Engineer, ChatGPT Education and Learning at OpenAI rates 68 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Works on AI (AI Level 3 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.

Classification

Works on AI. The daily work is on AI products, without building the model.

  1. ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
  2. ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
  3. ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
  4. ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39

Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.

Prepare for this job

Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.

Skills and AI tools this role asks for

AI Research

Also common in software engineer jobs at this level

Pay

This job starts at
$459k
Typical software engineer job
$168k

This posting starts 173% above the typical software engineer job. See software engineer jobs

Questions you could be asked

  1. Tell me about a research question you investigated. What did you find?
  2. Describe a typical day in a role like this one: which parts run through AI directly?
  3. If you removed AI from this role, what would be left, and how do you decide what still needs a human?

Adapt your resume

  • List these exact terms on your resume: AI Research. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
  • Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
  • Show where AI is part of your daily process, not a one-off project. This role expects it to be a running habit.

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