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About This Role
Applied AI Engineering - Seattle
About the Team
The Statsig team within OpenAI builds the experimentation, feature rollout, dynamic configuration, and analytics systems that help OpenAI ship products with speed, safety, and evidence. Our work sits on the critical path for how product, engineering, research, and go-to-market teams learn from real-world usage and make high-confidence decisions.
Statsig began as an independent company focused on helping builders move faster through trustworthy experimentation and feature management. After Statsig joined OpenAI for every product we ship.
Today, we support teams across ChatGPT, Codex, model measurement, consumer experiences, business subscriptions, developer products, and the shared infrastructure that connects them. These teams rely on Statsig to safely introduce new capabilities, compare product and model behavior, measure impact, and roll changes forward or back with confidence.
We are at a defining moment in the platform journey. OpenAI has the data, product surface area, and pace of innovation to learn faster than almost any organization in the world, but that potential only becomes real if teams can experiment responsibly, measure clearly, and roll out changes safely.
We are evolving experimentation systems to help teams learn from product behavior and make better evidence-based decisions.
Based out of OpenAI’s Bellevue office, we are a close-knit team that values in-person collaboration, urgency, craft, and impact. We build for other builders, and the best version of this team is one where every OpenAI product team can move faster because the experimentation and rollout layer is dependable, fast, and easy to use.
About the Role
We are looking for a Machine Learning Engineer to lead the technical direction for ML-powered experimentation and insights capabilities. You will build production systems that learn from privacy-protected product and experimentation data to generate evidence-backed insights and support decision-making, and help teams decide which ideas are worth testing live.
This is an end-to-end, 0-to-1 role. You will work across ML modeling, retrieval and LLM systems, statistical methods, simulation, data and training pipelines, backend services, and user- and agent-facing product experiences. The hard part is not merely producing a plausible answer. It is making each insight and prediction traceable, calibrated, useful, and safe enough to influence real product decisions.
Live experiments remain the source of causal validation. You will design systems that make uncertainty explicit, backtest against historical outcomes, compare predictions with online results, learn from misses, and abstain when the evidence is weak. You will preserve clear review, permission, and approval boundaries as automation becomes more powerful.
You will collaborate closely with teams building ChatGPT capabilities that can support the full company.
In This Role, You Will
- Set and execute the technical roadmap for Generative Insights and Predictive Experimentation, from early prototypes through production adoption.
- Build cross-experiment learning systems that retrieve and synthesize historical experiments, detect recurring effects and segment behavior, reanalyze prior results when data or methods improve, and generate hypotheses with clear evidence and provenance.
- Develop predictive models and simulation workflows, including simulation-based evaluation approaches, to estimate likely impact, affected segments, regression risk, and uncertainty before a full live experiment.
- Create high-quality datasets and feature or retrieval pipelines from exposures, events, metrics, experiment metadata, and replay data, with strong lineage, freshness, privacy, and data-quality controls.
- Establish rigorous evaluation through offline benchmarks, backtests, calibration, drift monitoring, prediction-to-outcome comparisons, and explicit failure or abstention behavior.
- Turn models into durable product, API, and agent workflows that move from an insight to experiment design, approval-gated action, and measured learning.
- Partner deeply with data science and product teams on experiment design, causal inference, sequential decision-making, variance reduction, and the boundary between prediction and causal evidence.
- Build reliable services and intuitive workflows so sophisticated ML capabilities are understandable and useful to teams making high-stakes product decisions.
- Provide technical leadership across engineering.
You Might Thrive In This Role If You
- Have led ambiguous 0-to-1 production ML products where success was measured by better real-world decisions, not only offline model metrics.
- Have strong hands-on experience across the ML lifecycle: dataset design, training or adaptation, evaluation, deployment, monitoring, and iteration.
- Bring depth in one or more of LLM and retrieval systems, ranking or recommendation, forecasting or anomaly detection, causal ML or experiment analysis, or simulation. You do not need to have done all of them.
- Have strong software engineering fundamentals and can build high-quality production systems in Python while working comfortably across data boundaries.
- Have a strong grounding in machine learningal study or equivalent practical experience.
- Understand experimentation and statistical reasoning, especially why predictive accuracy is not the same as causal validity.
- Treat calibration, uncertainty, provenance, privacy, and human review as product requirements, not cleanup work.
- Can translate ambiguous partner questions into a product and technical roadmap, and work well with product, data science, research, and infrastructure partners.
- Enjoy building for internal power users and agents, and can make sophisticated ML capabilities feel clear and actionable.
- Value in-person collaboration and want to help shape a growing Bellevue-based team.
Location and Workplace
This role is based in Bellevue, Washington. The team works in person and uses that time to move quickly, solve ambiguous problems together, and stay close to the product teams we support.
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
$437K – $485K + 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.
Salary Context
This $437K-$485K range is above the 75th percentile for AI/ML Engineer roles in our dataset (median: $176K across 1540 roles with salary data).
View full AI/ML Engineer salary data →Role Details
About This Role
AI/ML Engineers build and deploy machine learning models in production. They work across the full ML lifecycle: data pipelines, model training, evaluation, and serving infrastructure. The role has evolved significantly over the past two years. Where ML Engineers once spent most of their time on model architecture, the job now tilts heavily toward inference optimization, cost management, and integrating LLM capabilities into existing systems. Companies want engineers who can ship production systems, and the experimenter-only role is fading fast.
Day-to-day, you're writing training pipelines, debugging data quality issues, setting up evaluation frameworks, and figuring out why your model performs differently in staging than it did on your dev set. The best ML engineers are obsessive about reproducibility and measurement. They instrument everything. They know that a model is only as good as the data feeding it and the infrastructure serving it.
Across the 9,653 AI roles we're tracking, AI/ML Engineer positions make up 76% of the market. At OpenAI, this role fits into their broader AI and engineering organization.
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
What the Work Looks Like
A typical week might include: debugging a data pipeline that's silently dropping 3% of training examples, running A/B tests on a new model version, writing documentation for a feature flag system that lets you roll back model deployments, and reviewing a junior engineer's PR for a new evaluation metric. Meetings tend to be cross-functional since ML touches product, engineering, and data teams.
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
Skills Required
Python and PyTorch dominate the requirements. Most roles expect experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and familiarity with ML frameworks like TensorFlow or JAX. RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) has become a top-3 skill requirement as companies integrate LLMs into their products. Docker and Kubernetes show up in about a third of postings, reflecting the production focus of the role.
Beyond the core stack, employers increasingly want experience with experiment tracking tools (MLflow, Weights & Biases), feature stores, and vector databases. Fine-tuning experience is valuable but less common than you'd think from reading Twitter. Most production LLM work is RAG and prompt engineering, not fine-tuning. If you have both, you're in a strong position.
Companies that are serious about AI/ML hiring tend to post specific infrastructure details in the job description: the frameworks they use, their model serving stack, their data pipeline tools. Vague postings that just say 'ML experience required' without specifics are often companies that haven't figured out what they need yet.
Compensation Benchmarks
AI/ML Engineer roles pay a median of $212,000 based on 11,857 positions with disclosed compensation. Mid-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $193,200. This role's midpoint ($461K) sits 117% above the category median. Disclosed range: $437K to $485K.
Across all AI roles, the market median is $213,400. Top-quartile compensation starts at $264,230. The 90th percentile reaches $319,400. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Safety ($253,100) and Research Engineer ($252,000). By seniority level: Entry: $110,408; Mid: $193,200; Senior: $228,700; Director: $272,275; VP: $235,000.
OpenAI AI Hiring
OpenAI has 32 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across AI Architect, AI/ML Engineer, Data Scientist, AI Engineering Manager. Positions span New York, NY, San Francisco, CA, US, San Francisco, CA. Compensation range: $280K - $536K.
Location Context
AI roles in Seattle pay a median of $226,100 across 973 tracked positions. That's 6% above the national median.
Career Path
Common paths into AI/ML Engineer roles include Data Scientist, Software Engineer, Research Engineer.
From here, career progression typically leads toward ML Architect, AI Engineering Manager, Principal ML Engineer.
The fastest path into ML engineering is through software engineering with a self-directed ML education. A CS degree helps, but production engineering skills matter more than academic credentials. Build something that works, deploy it, and measure it. That portfolio project is worth more than a Coursera certificate. For career growth, the fork comes around the senior level: go deep on technical complexity (staff/principal track) or move into managing ML teams.
What to Expect in Interviews
Expect system design questions around ML pipelines: how you'd build a training pipeline for a specific use case, handle data drift, or design A/B testing infrastructure for model deployments. Coding rounds typically involve Python, with emphasis on data manipulation (pandas, numpy) and algorithm implementation. Take-home assignments often ask you to build an end-to-end ML pipeline from raw data to deployed model.
When evaluating opportunities: Companies that are serious about AI/ML hiring tend to post specific infrastructure details in the job description: the frameworks they use, their model serving stack, their data pipeline tools. Vague postings that just say 'ML experience required' without specifics are often companies that haven't figured out what they need yet.
AI Hiring Overview
The AI job market has 9,653 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 193 entry-level, 4,500 mid-level, 3,455 senior, and 1,505 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 6% of the market (568 positions). The remaining 9,010 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.
The market median for AI roles is $213,400. Top-quartile compensation starts at $264,230. The 90th percentile reaches $319,400. Highest-paying categories: AI Safety ($253,100 median, 57 roles); Research Engineer ($252,000 median, 419 roles); AI Engineering Manager ($251,622 median, 51 roles).
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
The AI Job Market Today
The AI job market spans 9,653 open positions across 16 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (7,301), Data Scientist (441), AI Software Engineer (438). These three account for the majority of open positions, though smaller categories often have higher per-role compensation because of specialized skill requirements.
The seniority mix tells a story about where AI teams are in their maturity. Entry-level roles (193) are outnumbered by mid-level (4,500) and senior (3,455) positions, reflecting that most companies are past the 'build a team from scratch' phase and need experienced engineers who can ship production systems. Leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level) total 1,505 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.
Remote work availability sits at 6% of all AI roles (568 positions), with 9,010 requiring on-site or hybrid attendance. The remote share has stabilized after the post-pandemic correction. Senior and specialized roles (Research Scientist, ML Architect) are more likely to be remote-eligible than entry-level positions, partly because experienced hires have more negotiating power and partly because these roles require less hands-on mentorship.
AI compensation is structured in clear tiers. The market median sits at $213,400. Top-quartile roles start at $264,230, and the 90th percentile reaches $319,400. These figures include base salary with disclosed compensation. Total compensation (including equity, bonuses, and sign-on) runs 20-40% higher at companies that offer those components.
Category matters for compensation. AI Safety roles lead at $253,100 median, while Prompt Engineer roles sit at $141,440. The spread between highest and lowest-paying categories reflects the premium on specialized technical skills versus broader analytical roles.
The most in-demand skills across all AI postings: Python (1,605 postings), Aws (916 postings), Azure (724 postings), Rag (634 postings), Gcp (522 postings), Pytorch (495 postings), Kubernetes (384 postings), Claude (383 postings). Python dominates, appearing in the vast majority of role descriptions regardless of category. Cloud platform experience (AWS, GCP, Azure) is the second most common requirement. The newer entrants to the top skills list (RAG, vector databases, LLM APIs) reflect the shift from traditional ML toward generative AI applications.
Frequently Asked Questions
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