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 1,228 job listings posted in the US, Dec 2025 – Oct 2026. Bonus and equity are not included.

Software Engineer$266K–$385K/yr

100 listings · spread $224K–$490K/yr

Account Director$189K–$265K/yr

26 listings · spread $184K–$397K/yr

Technical Program Manager$238K–$335K/yr

26 listings · spread $205K–$445K/yr

Product Manager$293K–$385K/yr

24 listings · spread $238K–$490K/yr

Data Scientist$293K–$385K/yr

16 listings · spread $230K–$515K/yr

Engineering Manager$347K–$445K/yr

15 listings · spread $293K–$490K/yr

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

13 listings · spread $230K–$453K/yr

Applied AI Engineer$198K–$280K/yr

12 listings · spread $197K–$302K/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 349 open roles.

Compensation Business Partner, GTMSeattle, Washington · Hybrid

Compensation Business Partner, GTMWashington, District of Columbia · Hybrid

Media Relations, Safety CommunicationsSan Francisco, California · Hybrid

Product Marketing, Messaging LeadSan Francisco, California · Hybrid

Audio Engineer, Live VideoSan Francisco, California · Onsite

Content Marketing Manager, Demand GenerationSan Francisco, California · Hybrid

Data Center Design ManagerRemote · Remote only

Director of Events ManagementSan Francisco, California · Hybrid

Events Design ProducerSan Francisco, California · Hybrid

Strategic Finance, Emerging B2B ProductsSan Francisco, California · Hybrid

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 says EU small business use of AI agents grew 8.1 times since Maycryptobriefing.com · Oct 14, 2026

Eight US states sue OpenAI, alleging ChatGPT harms childrencryptobriefing.com · Oct 14, 2026

OpenAI Company News & Analysis - TheInformation.comtheinformation.com · Oct 13, 2026

OpenAI Newsroom (@OpenAINewsroom) — X Web Viewertwiscan.com · Oct 13, 2026

OpenAI To Watermark ChatGPT Text In The EU, Opens API Opt-Insearchenginejournal.com · Oct 6, 2026

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