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OpenAIOpenAISan Francisco, CA

Research Engineer, Privacy

Research Engineer on OpenAI's Privacy team designing and prototyping privacy-preserving ML algorithms like differential privacy and federated learning at scale. Requires hands-on PETs experience, fluency in PyTorch/JAX, and a track record implementing or publishing novel privacy work.

380k – 445k
HybridML Engineering

About the role

Responsibilities

  • Design and prototype privacy-preserving machine-learning algorithms (e.g., differential privacy, secure aggregation, federated learning) that can be deployed at OpenAI scale.
  • Measure and strengthen model robustness against privacy attacks such as membership inference, model inversion, and data memorization leaks—balancing utility with provable guarantees.
  • Develop internal libraries, evaluation suites, and documentation that make cutting-edge privacy techniques accessible to engineering and research teams.
  • Lead deep-dive investigations into the privacy–performance trade-offs of large models, publishing insights that inform model-training and product-safety decisions.
  • Define and codify privacy standards, threat models, and audit procedures that guide the entire ML lifecycle—from dataset curation to post-deployment monitoring.
  • Collaborate across Security, Policy, Product, and Legal to translate evolving regulatory requirements into practical technical safeguards and tooling.

Requirements

  • Hands-on research or production experience with PETs (Privacy-Enhancing Technologies).
  • Fluent in modern deep-learning stacks (PyTorch/JAX) and comfortable turning cutting-edge papers into reliable, well-tested code.
  • Enjoy stress-testing models—probing them for private data leakage—and can explain complex attack vectors to non-experts with clarity.
  • Track record of publishing (or implementing) novel privacy or security work and relish bridging the gap between academia and real-world systems.
  • Thrive in fast-moving, cross-disciplinary environments where you alternate between open-ended research and shipping production features under tight deadlines.
  • Communicate crisply, document rigorously, and care deeply about building AI systems that respect user privacy while pushing the frontiers of capability.

Skills

Differential PrivacyFederated LearningPyTorchJAXSecure AggregationMembership InferenceModel InversionData MemorizationPrivacy-Enhancing TechnologiesMachine LearningDeep Learning

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