Software Engineer AI Jobs in California
Software Engineer AI jobs in California are among the most active in the country, concentrated in technology, defense, biotech, and enterprise software, with openings from entry-level machine learning engineers through principal and staff AI researchers. The largest hiring markets are the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, and San Diego, where established employers like Google, Apple, and Qualcomm maintain significant AI engineering teams. In-demand specialties include large language model development, computer vision, and ML infrastructure engineering. Find a role that fits below and apply directly.
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About The Team
The Safety Systems team is dedicated to ensuring the safety, robustness, and reliability of AI models and their deployment in the real world. Learn more about OpenAI’s approach to safety. Building on the many years of our practical alignment work and applied safety efforts, Safety Systems addresses emerging safety issues and develops new fundamental solutions to enable the safe deployment of our most advanced models and future AGI, to make AI that is beneficial and trustworthy.
About The Role
At OpenAI, we're dedicated to advancing artificial intelligence, and we know that creating a secure and reliable platform is vital to our mission. That's why we're seeking a software engineer to help us build out our trust and safety capabilities. In this role, you'll work with our entire engineering team to design and implement systems that detect and prevent abuse, promote user safety, and reduce risk across our platform. You'll be at the forefront of our efforts to ensure that the immense potential of AI is harnessed in a responsible and sustainable manner.
Your Responsibilities
- Architect, build, and maintain anti-abuse and content moderation infrastructure designed to protect us and end users from unwanted behavior.
- Work closely with our other engineers and researchers to utilize both industry standard and novel AI techniques to measure, monitor and improve AI models’ alignment to human values.
- Diagnose and remediate active incidents on the platform and build new tooling and infrastructure that address the root causes of system failure.
You Might Thrive In This Role If
- You have built and run production services in a high growth, rapidly scaling environment.
- You can debug live issues and restore systems quickly.
- You have worked on content safety, fraud, or abuse, or are motivated and excited to work on present-day (“now-term”) AI safety.
- You have experience with Python or with modern languages such as C++, Rust, or Go, and are able to quickly ramp up on Python.
- You understand the trade-offs of capabilities and risks and navigate them to deploy novel products and features safely.
- You can critically assess risks of a new product or feature and devise innovative solutions to mitigate these risks without harming the product experience.
- You’re pragmatic. You know when to build a quick, good-enough fix, and when to invest in a robust, lasting solution.
- You possess strong project management skills. You are self-directed and can remove roadblocks to drive projects to completion with minimal guidance.
- You’ve deployed classifiers or machine learning models, or are excited to learn about modern ML infra.
Our tech stack
- Our infrastructure is built on Terraform, Kubernetes, Azure, Python, Postgres, and Kafka.
- While we value experience with these technologies, we are primarily looking for engineers with strong technical skills who understand the fundamental problems these tools solve, and can quickly pick up new tools and frameworks.
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.
Compensation Range: $185K - $325K
See All 1,689+ Software Engineer AI Jobs in California
Find roles in California that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
Find Software Engineer AI JobsSoftware Engineer AI Jobs by City in California
Where California roles are concentrated, by current openings.
Software Engineer AI Job Market in California
A snapshot from current California openings, updated as new roles post.
Who's Hiring
- Apple171

- TikTok65

- NVIDIA62

- Google52

- Adobe45

Top Industries Hiring
- Technology & Software849
- Electronics & Hardware251
- Artificial Intelligence176
- Banking & Financial Services105
- Automotive84
What California Employers Look For
The qualifications that appear most often in software engineer AI jobs across California.
- Bachelor's or master's degree in computer science, AI, or a closely related engineering field
- Proficiency in Python and at least one ML framework such as PyTorch or TensorFlow
- Experience designing, training, and deploying machine learning models in production environments
- Familiarity with cloud platforms such as AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure for AI workloads
- Strong foundation in data structures, algorithms, and software engineering best practices
- Experience with LLM fine-tuning, prompt engineering, or retrieval-augmented generation pipelines
Software Engineer AI Jobs in California: Frequently Asked Questions
How do you become a software engineer ai in California?
Software engineer ai roles in California do not require a state-issued license, so the path runs through education and demonstrated technical skill. Most California employers expect at least a bachelor's degree in computer science, machine learning, or a related field, with many preferring a master's for research-oriented positions. Building a portfolio of AI projects, contributing to open-source ML repositories, and completing recognized certifications in deep learning or cloud AI platforms strengthens a candidacy considerably with California technology employers.
How much do software engineer AIs make in California?
Software engineer AIs in California earn a median of about $174,410 a year, based on May 2025 Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data, ranging from around $105,060 for the lowest 10% to over $272,670 for the top 10%. Pay rises with experience, specialty, and employer.
Which companies hire software engineer ais in California?
Employers hiring software engineer ais in California right now include Apple, TikTok, and NVIDIA, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of June 2026. California's dense concentration of technology headquarters and defense contractors means a wide range of company sizes and sectors are actively recruiting, from large consumer technology platforms to aerospace and biotech firms.
Which California cities have the most software engineer ai jobs?
San Francisco, San Jose, and Santa Clara account for the largest share of software engineer ai openings in California. The Bay Area leads because of its concentration of major technology headquarters and venture-backed AI startups, Los Angeles draws from its growing enterprise software and entertainment technology sectors, and San Diego's strong defense and biotech industries anchor demand there.
Are there remote software engineer ai jobs in California?
Yes, and more than most fields. About 23% of software engineer ai openings tied to California are remote or hybrid as of June 2026, reflecting how naturally the work lends itself to distributed teams. Model development, research, and data pipeline engineering are the sub-areas most likely to offer fully remote arrangements, while roles involving proprietary hardware or on-site lab infrastructure tend to require in-person presence.
How can I get hired as a software engineer ai in California with little or no experience?
The most realistic entry path is securing a junior or associate machine learning engineer role at a mid-size California technology company that invests in on-the-job training. Large California employers like Apple and Qualcomm run structured new-graduate programs, and Bay Area AI startups frequently hire candidates who demonstrate ability through a strong GitHub portfolio or published Kaggle competition results. Lateral moves from software engineering, data analysis, or data science roles are common entry points, and completing a recognized ML specialization certificate gives candidates without a graduate degree a measurable credential to point to.
Where can I find and apply to software engineer ai jobs in California?
You can find and apply to software engineer ai jobs in California on Migrate Mate, which lists current California openings from employers actively hiring. Search the available roles, find the ones that fit your background and target location, and apply directly to the ones that match.
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