Software Engineer, Privacy Engineering (Lawful Access)

About the role

The Privacy Engineering team builds secure, reliable systems that help OpenAI meet its legal obligations while protecting user data, partnering with Legal and Engineering teams on lawful data access requests and other legal workflows. This full-stack Software Engineer role builds the internal tools and data pipelines behind lawful data access request workflows and Legal Operations, making authorized retrieval and case handling accurate, efficient and auditable. It suits someone who enjoys turning ambiguous operational requirements into durable systems and cares deeply about sensitive-data handling.

The role is based in San Francisco, CA, with London, UK and Dublin, Ireland also under consideration. It uses a hybrid model of 3 days in the office per week and offers relocation assistance to new employees.

Key responsibilities

• Design, build and operate backend systems and workflow tooling for the full lifecycle of lawful data access requests, from intake and scoping through retrieval, review, preparation and audit.
• Build reliable data pipelines and interfaces across products and data stores so authorized teams can find and handle the right records accurately and reproducibly.
• Implement least-privilege access, approval gates, provenance, audit trails, data minimization and safe failure modes for sensitive workflows.
• Partner with Legal and Legal Operations to turn legal and operational requirements into clear technical designs and intuitive operator experiences.
• Identify automation opportunities that reduce repetitive work while keeping human review, judgment and accountability.
• Own production systems through testing, observability, incident response, documentation and continuous reliability improvements.
• Help define the architecture and roadmap for reusable privacy and legal-infrastructure foundations.

Required profile

• Experience building or operating systems for lawful data access requests, understanding their legal-process lifecycle, privacy and security constraints, auditability requirements and operational sensitivities.
• Strong backend engineering fundamentals and experience building production services or data-intensive systems.
• Ability to reason carefully about correctness, authorization, security and privacy with sensitive data.
• Track record of turning ambiguous requirements into pragmatic plans and communicating technical trade-offs clearly.
• End-to-end ownership, including operating what you build, and comfort learning unfamiliar products and domains.
• Experience collaborating across Engineering, Legal, operations, Privacy and Security stakeholders.