OpenAI

Research & Development

Apt Insight

They are driving frontier AI development with exceptional compensation and high mission alignment, though the pace is demanding. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, the organization operates in the artificial intelligence and research sector. It is structured as a private public benefit corporation governed by a nonprofit foundation, with a workforce in the thousands. Their work centers on deploying large-scale language and multimodal models globally.

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About

OpenAI is a company that believes in building safe and beneficial AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) systems to solve human-level problems.

Founded2015

HeadquartersSan Francisco, US

IndustryResearch & Development

Websiteopenai.com

Employees9.3K

Total Funding$196.0B

Posted base pay at OpenAI

Posted base pay ranges from 1,402 job listings posted in the US, Dec 2025 – Nov 2026. Bonus and equity are not included.

Software Engineer$266K–$385K/yr

112 listings · spread $230K–$490K/yr

Technical Program Manager$216K–$335K/yr

31 listings · spread $205K–$445K/yr

Account Director$189K–$290K/yr

29 listings · spread $187K–$380K/yr

Product Manager$293K–$385K/yr

24 listings · spread $238K–$490K/yr

Data Scientist$293K–$385K/yr

20 listings · spread $230K–$515K/yr

Engineering Manager$347K–$445K/yr

17 listings · spread $293K–$498K/yr

Forward Deployed Engineer$185K–$300K/yr

15 listings · spread $162K–$300K/yr

Full Stack Software Engineer$266K–$385K/yr

14 listings · spread $230K–$452K/yr

Each range is the median posted minimum and maximum for the role. Pay changes by location, so the spread shows the 10th to 90th percentile of all listings for the role.

Open roles at OpenAI

The 10 newest of 358 open roles.

Business Development Manager, Product PartnershipsLondon, England · Onsite

Data Scientist, PreparednessSan Francisco, California · Onsite

Software Engineer, GuardianLondon, England · Onsite

Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) - NYCNew York, New York · Hybrid

Sourcing Manager, Core ProductsSan Francisco, California · Hybrid

Legal Program ManagerSan Francisco, California · Hybrid

Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE), Life Sciences - SFSan Francisco, California · Hybrid

Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE), Life Sciences - NYCNew York, New York · Hybrid

Mechanical Engineer, Power GenerationSan Francisco, California · Onsite

Electrical Engineer, Power GenerationSan Francisco, California · Onsite

Why people join & leave

Why join

Exceptional compensation and benefitsMission-driven work on frontier AI modelsCollaboration with leading researchers and engineersHigh-impact global products

Why leave

Intense work hours and burnoutReactive leadership and frequent course correctionsInternal stress and on-call demandsNavigating external legal and regulatory pressure

Company Pulse

Headcount

-48%past year

Raised

$196.0Btotal

In the News

OpenAI appoints Jill Hazelbaker as Chief Corporate Affairs Officer | OpenAIopenai.com · Nov 3, 2026

OpenAI - Intelligencetao.media · Nov 3, 2026

OpenAI has about $11 billion in commitments for a funding round it initially targeted at $30 billion, WSJ reports - AI Tech Dailyaitechdaily.com · Nov 2, 2026

OpenAI Newsopenai.com

OpenAI News | Today's Latest Storiesreuters.com

Employee Experience

4.2/5

Career Opportunities

4.3

Compensation & Benefits

4.6

Culture & Values

3.9

Diversity & Inclusion

3.9

Senior Management

4.0

Work-Life Balance

3.3

Quick Take

Strengths

Top-tier compensationCompensation and benefits earns a high rating of 92.

High overall ratingOverall employee satisfaction holds strong at 84 out of 100.

Watch out

Poor work-life balanceWork-life balance is rated low at 66, driven by intense workloads and tight timelines.

Note

Novel governanceOperates as a public benefit corporation governed by a nonprofit foundation.

Things to consider

Demanding workload — Employees frequently report intense pressure, fast iteration cycles, and a weak work-life balance rating of 66.

Legal scrutiny — The organization faces multistate litigation and investigations concerning safety and data privacy.

What They Build

They develop and serve frontier artificial intelligence models and developer APIs, including ChatGPT and Codex. Engineering work centers on large-scale model pre-training, low-latency inference infrastructure, and safety evaluations. The technical environment prioritizes high-throughput distributed systems and rapid production iteration.

Artificial General Intelligence

Large Language Models

Developer APIs

Model Safety & Alignment

Enterprise AI Tools

Domains

Machine Learning

MLOps

Distributed Systems

Cloud Infrastructure

Security

Tech Stack

Kubernetes

Google Cloud Platform

MLOps

Confluent Kafka

ArgoCD

Bazel

CMake

Lua