Research Engineer/Research Scientist - Post Training, North Stars
OpenAI
San Francisco, CA · $380k–$500k a year · Posted June 25, 2026
Just laid off? Start here: a plan for the first weeks
More in California job market · All Research Engineer jobs (144) · Technology & Software · Engineering jobs
More roles at OpenAI
- Senior Counsel, Litigation (Safety) · San Francisco, CA
- Recruiter, Data Center Infrastructure · San Francisco, CA
- Controls Engineer, Power Generation and Microgird · San Francisco, CA
- Product Engagement Manager, User Operations · San Francisco, CA
- White Space Manager, Network & Data Halls · San Francisco, CA
- Program Manager, M&A Recruiting | People · San Francisco, CA
Similar jobs
- Principal AI Engineer, Sr AI Engineer · Baker Tilly · CA
- Applied Machine Learning Engineer, AI for VLSI Design - New College Grad 2026 · Nvidia · Santa Clara, CA
- Senior AI Compute Engineer - NVIS · Nvidia · Santa Clara, CA
- Computer Scientist - Telemetry Processing Lead · Jt4 · Edwards AFB, CA
- Computer Scientist V - Senior Software Systems Engineer · Jt4 · Edwards AFB, CA
- Senior AI Engineer, Proactive Comms · Hinge Health · San Francisco, CA
Where San Francisco, CA ranks
Where San Francisco, CA placed in our monthly rankings, month by month. Each month stays online at its own address.
November 2026
- #1Best cities for security jobs316 openings · of 20
- #1Best cities for technology jobs7,178 openings · of 100
- #1Best cities for financial services pay after cost of living$173k · of 33
- #1Best cities for entry-level jobs that want AI skills35% · of 100
- #1Best cities for entry-level jobs that want AI skills in the West Coast35% · of 54
- #1Cities with the most jobs that do not need a four-year degree in the West Coast902 jobs · of 47
Rankings about engineering jobs
- Best cities for software and engineering jobs #1 San Francisco (3,412 openings)
- Best cities for engineering pay after cost of living #1 San Mateo ($216k)
- Most requested AI skills in engineering jobs #1 AI tools in daily work (6.1%)
- AI tools named most often in engineering jobs #1 Claude (1.7%)
- Employers with the most engineering jobs #1 Amazon (2,992 roles)
Pay compared with the market
This listing pays about $440,000 a year. Across 69 open research engineer listings that state pay, the middle half runs $250,000 to $440,000 and the median is $300,000. That is inside the middle half of those listings, 47% above the median.
Listed pay is what employers advertise, not what people are paid.
How AI is used in this kind of work
Among computer and information research scientists, AI is already used for a large share of the tasks. Measured exposure for computer and information research scientists: 34% (high).
Share of this job’s tasks that AI is already used for at work, from real usage. It is not a forecast of job loss, and a low number means no use seen yet. Source: Anthropic Economic Index.
Skills this job asks for
Say which you have and which you want to build. We use it to match you to jobs like this one.
About the job
About the Team
The Post Training team seeks to empower all of humanity to benefit from frontier intelligence in whatever way they choose. We are responsible for training models to deploy to millions of users globally via ChatGPT, the API, and future products. We aim to evolve ChatGPT from a chatbot to an infinitely capable and personalized superassistant supporting human flourishing.
We work on defining, measuring, and improving capabilities across the training stack. Our focus areas include but are not limited to model behavior, personalization, safety, factuality, instruction following, personality, interactivity, multilingual fluency, world interaction, and bringing agents to everyone. We chart the course for what to strive towards.
We partner closely with research and product teams across the company ensuring that our models are safe, efficient, and reliable.
About the Role
You’ll work as a Research Engineer / Scientist on the North Stars team within the broader Post Training research org. You will work on bringing the next generation of AI-enabled experiences to all of humanity by closing the capability overhang between power users and the average consumer, including areas like tool-use, feature discovery, connectors, and instruction following. You will think deeply about the current bottlenecks in model behavior, translate these insights into robust evals, training data, reward signals, and model and harness improvements.
We're looking for individuals with strong ML engineering skills and research experience passionate about creative, product-driven research.
This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.
In this role, you will:
- Own and pursue a research agenda to improve model capability and performance.
- Collaborate closely with the other research and product teams, allowing customers to optimize their own models.
- Build robust evaluations for tracking modeling improvements.
- Design, implement, test, and debug code across our research stack.
You might thrive in this role if you:
- Have a deep understanding of machine learning and machine learning applications.
- Have a working knowledge of relevant models, and building evaluations for model capability improvement.
- Are comfortable diving into a large ML codebase to debug.
- Thrive in a dynamic and technically complex environment.
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, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity.
We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.
For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement https://cdn.openai.com/policies/eeo-policy-statement.pdf.
Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.
To notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant, please submit a report through this form https://form.asana.com/?d=57018692298241&k=5MqR40fZd7jlxVUh5J-UeA. No response will be provided to inquiries unrelated to job posting compliance.
We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link https://form.asana.com/?k=bQ7w9h3iexRlicUdWRiwvg&d=57018692298241.
OpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy https://cdn.openai.com/policies/global-employee-and-contractor-privacy-policy.pdf
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.