OpenAI
Software Engineer, API Agents
- Employment type
- Full-time
- Location
- San Francisco
- Published
- Oct 10, 2026
- Last checked
- Oct 26, 2026
About this role
About the Team
API Agents builds the shared agent harness, tools, and infrastructure that turn OpenAI’s frontier models into systems that can reliably complete real work. We carry the capabilities behind Codex into a much broader set of products and workflows across software engineering, research, finance, healthcare, enterprise operations, and more. Our work spans search and connected context, computer use, memory, delegation and multi-agent coordination, and safe execution. Sitting at the intersection of Research, Codex, infrastructure, and applied product teams, we build reusable agent capabilities that compound across the ecosystem.
About the Role
We are looking for an experienced backend software engineer to build the core systems behind the next generation of agents. You will design reliable services and abstractions that help agents find the right context, use tools and computers, retain knowledge, coordinate over long-running workflows, and take action safely. The role combines deep backend and infrastructure work with strong product judgment, with opportunities to work across agent runtimes, orchestration, search, execution environments, identity and permissions, observability, and evaluations. This is software and systems engineering rather than model training: success comes from strong backend fundamentals, high agency, and the ability to turn fast-moving research capabilities into dependable production primitives.
In this role, you will:
- Design, build, and operate the shared agent harness and backend infrastructure that power long-running, high-value workflows across OpenAI and third-party products.
- Build reusable capabilities across search and connected context, computer use, memory, tool execution, delegation, subagents, and multi-agent orchestration.
- Establish the foundations agents need to operate safely in production, including secure execution environments, identity and permissions, observability, evaluations, reliability, and cost and latency efficiency.