Software Engineer, Privacy Engineering (Lawful Access)
OpenAI · San Francisco
About this role
## About the Team The Privacy Engineering team builds secure, reliable systems that help OpenAI meet its legal obligations while protecting user data. We partner closely with Legal and engineering teams across OpenAI to support lawful data access requests and other critical legal workflows—turning complex, high-stakes processes into auditable and dependable technical systems with clear human oversight and strong privacy and security controls. ## About the Role We’re looking for a **full-stack Software Engineer** to build the internal tools and data pipelines that power **lawful data access request workflows** and **Legal Operations**. You’ll work across product and data systems to make authorized retrieval and case handling accurate, efficient, and auditable. This role is a great fit if you enjoy translating ambiguous operational requirements into durable systems, care deeply about sensitive-data handling, and want to improve both technical reliability and the day-to-day experience of the people operating these workflows. ## What You’ll Do - Design, build, and operate backend systems and workflow tooling for the full lifecycle of lawful data access requests (from intake and scoping through authorized retrieval, review, preparation, and audit). - Build reliable data pipelines and interfaces across products and data stores so authorized teams can locate 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 translate legal and operational requirements into clear technical designs and intuitive operator experiences. - Identify responsible automation opportunities that reduce repetitive work while preserving 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 as OpenAI’s products and obligations evolve. ## You Might Thrive If You - Have experience building or operating systems for lawful data access requests, and understand the domain’s legal-process lifecycle, privacy/security constraints, auditability requirements, and operational sensitivities. - Have strong backend engineering fundamentals and experience building production services or data-intensive systems. - Can reason carefully about correctness, authorization, security, and privacy when working with sensitive data. - Have a track record of turning ambiguous requirements into pragmatic plans and communicating technical tradeoffs clearly. - Enjoy end-to-end ownership, including operating what you build, and are comfortable learning unfamiliar products and domains. - Care about operator experience and want to make complex workflows safer, clearer, and more efficient. - Can collaborate effectively across Engineering, Legal, Operations, Privacy, and Security stakeholders. ## About OpenAI OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We are an equal opportunity employer. For additional information, please see OpenAI’s EEO policy statement and related employment policies.
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