Job description

ABOUT THE TEAM Our team builds classification and evaluation systems that give post-training and research teams fast, reliable feedback on model behavior. We combine machine learning and production engineering to make these capabilities accurate, efficient, and useful at scale, helping researchers assess changes and improve models and products. We work closely with research teams to develop useful measurements and make them practical to run. Our work spans classifier development, rigorous evaluation, and efficient production inference, with ownership from initial experimentation through deployment and continued improvement. ABOUT THE ROLE We’re looking for a machine learning engineer to develop new classification and evaluation capabilities and bring them into production. You’ll help turn open-ended questions about model behavior into well-defined ML problems, build methods that address them, and establish how reliably those methods work. This role combines traditional machine learning, model evaluation, and real-time engineering. You’ll own classifiers throughout their lifecycle, including supervised fine-tuning, distillation, evaluation, deployment, and production inference. You’ll work closely with researchers to identify valuable problems and with software engineers to make promising approaches useful at scale. IN THIS ROLE, YOU WILL: - Build, deploy, and operate production classification and evaluation systems that provide useful feedback to post-training and research teams. - Optimize production inference, including model serving, batching, caching, throughput, latency, compute utilization, and cost. - Train and optimize classifiers using supervised fine-tuning and distillation, validating quality and efficiency before deployment. - Own the reliability and observability of deployed classifiers, diagnose production issues, and improve their performance over time. - Design rigorous evaluations that assess accuracy, calibration, generalization, and potential measurement bias while guiding production tradeoffs. - Partner with software engineers to integrate models into reliable execution systems and support safe rollouts. - Build reusable engineering tools that make classifier training, evaluation, deployment, and iteration faster and more repeatable. - Work with post-training researchers and data scientists to translate their needs into modeling objectives, evaluation criteria, and production requirements. YOUR BACKGROUND MIGHT LOOK SOMETHING LIKE - Experience taking ML projects from problem formulation and experimentation through production deployment. - Strong foundations in supervised learning, statistics, and experimental design. - Practical experience evaluating models, investigating systematic errors, and working with imperfect labels. - Strong software engineering skills and the ability to build maintainable production ML systems. - Experience reasoning about inference performance and the tradeoffs between quality, latency, and compute cost. - The ability to combine careful scientific judgment with a practical approach to shipping and operating software. - Comfort working closely with researchers and engineers on open-ended problems. - Fluency in using AI agents to move quickly across multiple workstreams in a fast-paced environment. - Experience with model distillation, representation learning, calibration, or efficient inference is a plus. 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 cdn.openai.com. 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 form.asana.com. 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 form.asana.com. OpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy cdn.openai.com 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.

Requirements

Must-haves

Build, deploy, and operate production classification and evaluation systems that provide useful feedback to post-training and research teams.
Optimize production inference, including model serving, batching, caching, throughput, latency, compute utilization, and cost.
Train and optimize classifiers using supervised fine-tuning and distillation, validating quality and efficiency before deployment.
Own the reliability and observability of deployed classifiers, diagnose production issues, and improve their performance over time.
Design rigorous evaluations that assess accuracy, calibration, generalization, and potential measurement bias while guiding production tradeoffs.
Partner with software engineers to integrate models into reliable execution systems and support safe rollouts.
Build reusable engineering tools that make classifier training, evaluation, deployment, and iteration faster and more repeatable.
Work with post-training researchers and data scientists to translate their needs into modeling objectives, evaluation criteria, and production requirements.
Experience taking ML projects from problem formulation and experimentation through production deployment.
Strong foundations in supervised learning, statistics, and experimental design.
Practical experience evaluating models, investigating systematic errors, and working with imperfect labels.
Strong software engineering skills and the ability to build maintainable production ML systems.
Experience reasoning about inference performance and the tradeoffs between quality, latency, and compute cost.
The ability to combine careful scientific judgment with a practical approach to shipping and operating software.
Comfort working closely with researchers and engineers on open-ended problems.
Fluency in using AI agents to move quickly across multiple workstreams in a fast-paced environment.

Nice-to-haves

Experience with model distillation, representation learning, calibration, or efficient inference is a plus.

Application prep

Use the role’s language and application details while tailoring your materials.

Keywords to mirror

machine learningmlai

Platform: ashby
Effort: quick