Infrastructure Software Engineer Jobs in San Francisco, CA
Infrastructure Software Engineer jobs in San Francisco concentrate in SoMa, the Financial District, and Mission Bay, across cloud platforms, fintech, and enterprise software companies. Employers hiring right now include OpenAI, Anthropic, and DoorDash. Scan the live roles below and apply to whichever ones fit.
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Applied AI Engineering - San Francisco
About the Team
The Search Product Infrastructure team builds the systems that power search experiences across ChatGPT. We partner with teams developing models, operating inference infrastructure, building specialized search experiences, and maintaining search indexes to bring advances in models and retrieval into production. Our work spans search orchestration, model serving, experimentation, and distributed systems, with direct impact on answer quality, responsiveness, reliability, and efficiency at ChatGPT scale.
About the Role
As a senior engineer on the Search Product Infrastructure team, you will design, build, and operate the systems that connect models with search at ChatGPT scale. You will tackle challenges in search orchestration, inference efficiency, experimentation, and production reliability, making tradeoffs that directly shape answer quality and user experience. Working closely with researchers and partner engineering teams, you will own projects from technical design through launch and iteration, evolving the architecture as models, product capabilities, and demand grow.
This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.
In this role, you will:
Design and evolve the services that coordinate search classification, retrieval, ranking, and model inference, working closely with researchers and partner engineering teams to bring new capabilities into production.
Improve end-to-end latencyed tradeoffs between search quality, reliability, and compute cost.
Build experimentation tooling and automation to run reproducible A/B tests, define success metrics, and measure product impact. Use shadow traffic and load testing to validate system behavior, estimate capacity needs, and support safe production rollouts.
Own production reliability through observability, resilient fallback behavior, incident response, and automation that improves launch safety and reduces operational toil.
Build search APIs and tool interfaces that enable models and agents to retrieve information reliably while respecting access controls and preserving source attribution.
You might thrive in this role if you:
Have significant experience designingance, reliability, or resource efficiency.
Bring experience in one or more of searchation retrieval, ML infrastructure, inference serving, or other high-throughput online systems.
Have strong programming and systems debugging skills, and are comfortable working across languages and unfamiliar parts of a production stack.
Can turn ambiguous product or research needs into clear technical plans, align partners across teams, and carry projects through deployment and measurable results.
Enjoy learning across systems and ML, investigating unfamiliar problems, and sharing technical decisions and lessons clearly with others.
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 the full spectrum of humanity.
We are an equal opportunity employeration, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.
Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable lawation technology systems and related data security obligations.
To notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant. No response will be provided to inquiries unrelated to job posting compliance.
We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities.
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.
Compensation
$266K – $445K + Offers Equity
The base pay offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factorsance-related bonus(es) for eligible employees, and the following benefits.
Medical, dental, and vision insurance for you and your family, with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts
Pre-tax accounts for Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and commuter expenses (parking and transit)
401(k) retirement plan with employer match
Paid parental leave (up to 24 weeks for birth parents and 20 weeks for non-birthing parents), plus paid medical and caregiver leave (up to 8 weeks)
Paid time off: flexible PTO for exempt employees and up to 15 days annually for non-exempt employees
13+ paid company holidays, and multiple paid coordinated company office closures throughout the year for focus and recharge, plus paid sick or safe time (1 hour per 30 hours worked, or more, as required by applicable state or local law)
Mental health and wellness support
Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage
Annual learning and development stipend to fuel your professional growth
Daily meals in our offices, and meal delivery credits as eligible
Relocation support for eligible employees
Additional taxable fringe benefits, such as charitable donation matching and wellness stipends, may also be provided.
More details about our benefits are available to candidates during the hiring process.
This role is at-will and OpenAI reserves the right to modify base pay and other compensation components at any time based on individual performance, team or company results, or market conditions.
Applied AI Engineering - San Francisco
About the Team
The Search Product Infrastructure team builds the systems that power search experiences across ChatGPT. We partner with teams developing models, operating inference infrastructure, building specialized search experiences, and maintaining search indexes to bring advances in models and retrieval into production. Our work spans search orchestration, model serving, experimentation, and distributed systems, with direct impact on answer quality, responsiveness, reliability, and efficiency at ChatGPT scale.
About the Role
As a senior engineer on the Search Product Infrastructure team, you will design, build, and operate the systems that connect models with search at ChatGPT scale. You will tackle challenges in search orchestration, inference efficiency, experimentation, and production reliability, making tradeoffs that directly shape answer quality and user experience. Working closely with researchers and partner engineering teams, you will own projects from technical design through launch and iteration, evolving the architecture as models, product capabilities, and demand grow.
This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.
In this role, you will:
Design and evolve the services that coordinate search classification, retrieval, ranking, and model inference, working closely with researchers and partner engineering teams to bring new capabilities into production.
Improve end-to-end latencyed tradeoffs between search quality, reliability, and compute cost.
Build experimentation tooling and automation to run reproducible A/B tests, define success metrics, and measure product impact. Use shadow traffic and load testing to validate system behavior, estimate capacity needs, and support safe production rollouts.
Own production reliability through observability, resilient fallback behavior, incident response, and automation that improves launch safety and reduces operational toil.
Build search APIs and tool interfaces that enable models and agents to retrieve information reliably while respecting access controls and preserving source attribution.
You might thrive in this role if you:
Have significant experience designingance, reliability, or resource efficiency.
Bring experience in one or more of searchation retrieval, ML infrastructure, inference serving, or other high-throughput online systems.
Have strong programming and systems debugging skills, and are comfortable working across languages and unfamiliar parts of a production stack.
Can turn ambiguous product or research needs into clear technical plans, align partners across teams, and carry projects through deployment and measurable results.
Enjoy learning across systems and ML, investigating unfamiliar problems, and sharing technical decisions and lessons clearly with others.
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 the full spectrum of humanity.
We are an equal opportunity employeration, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.
Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable lawation technology systems and related data security obligations.
To notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant. No response will be provided to inquiries unrelated to job posting compliance.
We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities.
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.
Compensation
$266K – $445K + Offers Equity
The base pay offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factorsance-related bonus(es) for eligible employees, and the following benefits.
Medical, dental, and vision insurance for you and your family, with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts
Pre-tax accounts for Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and commuter expenses (parking and transit)
401(k) retirement plan with employer match
Paid parental leave (up to 24 weeks for birth parents and 20 weeks for non-birthing parents), plus paid medical and caregiver leave (up to 8 weeks)
Paid time off: flexible PTO for exempt employees and up to 15 days annually for non-exempt employees
13+ paid company holidays, and multiple paid coordinated company office closures throughout the year for focus and recharge, plus paid sick or safe time (1 hour per 30 hours worked, or more, as required by applicable state or local law)
Mental health and wellness support
Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage
Annual learning and development stipend to fuel your professional growth
Daily meals in our offices, and meal delivery credits as eligible
Relocation support for eligible employees
Additional taxable fringe benefits, such as charitable donation matching and wellness stipends, may also be provided.
More details about our benefits are available to candidates during the hiring process.
This role is at-will and OpenAI reserves the right to modify base pay and other compensation components at any time based on individual performance, team or company results, or market conditions.
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Find JobsInfrastructure Software Engineer Job Market in San Francisco
Who's Hiring
- OpenAI53
- Anthropic16
- DoorDash12
- ORB8
- Okta8
Top Industries Hiring
- Technology & Software74
- Science & Research37
- Artificial Intelligence16
- Manufacturing4
- Electronics & Hardware4
Infrastructure Software Engineer Jobs in San Francisco: Frequently Asked Questions
How do I get a infrastructure software engineer job in San Francisco?
San Francisco infrastructure software engineer roles are concentrated in SoMa, Mission Bay, and the Financial District, with the heaviest hiring coming from cloud infrastructure, fintech, and enterprise SaaS companies. Candidates who demonstrate hands-on experience with distributed systems, Kubernetes, or cloud platforms like AWS and GCP stand out in this market. Contributing to open-source infrastructure projects and building a visible GitHub portfolio gives a real edge with San Francisco's technically demanding hiring teams.
Which companies hire infrastructure software engineers in San Francisco?
San Francisco infrastructure software engineer roles are posted by OpenAI, Anthropic, and DoorDash and others right now, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of September 2026. The city draws a mix of large cloud and platform companies, fast-growing fintech firms, and mid-size SaaS businesses, all of whom maintain substantial infrastructure engineering teams.
Are there remote infrastructure software engineer jobs in San Francisco?
Yes, though the level of remote flexibility varies: roles focused on systems design, automation, and platform tooling tend to be more remote-friendly, while positions requiring hands-on data center or network work are typically on-site. About 55% of infrastructure software engineer openings tied to San Francisco are remote or hybrid as of September 2026, reflecting the city's strong culture of distributed engineering teams. Cloud-focused and SRE-oriented roles within San Francisco's tech sector account for the largest share of those flexible positions.
How can I get a infrastructure software engineer job in San Francisco with little or no experience?
The most realistic entry path in San Francisco is through associate site reliability engineer or junior DevOps roles at mid-size SaaS and fintech companies, many of which actively hire candidates who can demonstrate foundational Linux, scripting, and cloud skills even without years of experience. Bootcamp programs with hiring partnerships in SoMa and Mission Bay occasionally place early-career candidates directly. Building a portfolio of infrastructure automation projects on GitHub and targeting companies that run structured infrastructure apprenticeships gives entry-level applicants a concrete advantage in San Francisco's competitive market.
Which industries hire the most infrastructure software engineers in San Francisco?
San Francisco infrastructure software engineer roles concentrate in Technology & Software, Science & Research, and Artificial Intelligence, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of September 2026. San Francisco's status as a global hub for cloud computing, financial technology, and enterprise SaaS means these sectors consistently generate the deepest and most sustained demand for infrastructure engineering talent in the city.
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