Software Engineer, Privacy Engineering (Lawful Access)
Job description
Full-stack Software Engineer on OpenAI's Privacy Engineering team, building internal tools and data pipelines for lawful data access request workflows and Legal Operations. The role focuses on accurate, auditable, and secure handling of sensitive data.
At a glance
- Employment
- Full-time · Employee (employment agreement)
- Work mode
- Hybrid · London, United Kingdom · Dublin, Ireland
- Languages
- English
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
What we're looking for
- Have experience building or operating systems for lawful data access requests and understand the domain's 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 when working with sensitive data
- A track record of turning ambiguous requirements into pragmatic plans and communicating technical tradeoffs clearly
- End-to-end ownership, including operating what you build, and comfort learning unfamiliar products and domains
- Care for operator experience and a drive to make complex workflows safer, clearer, and more efficient
- Experience collaborating across Engineering, Legal, operations, Privacy, and Security stakeholders
Your team
Privacy Engineering
Builds secure, reliable systems that help OpenAI meet its legal obligations while protecting user data; partners closely with Legal and Engineering teams to support lawful data access requests and other critical legal workflows.
Benefits
- Relocation assistance to new employees
Apply
About OpenAI
An AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity
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.
Mission
Ensure that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity
Key facts
- AI research and deployment
- Uses a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week
- Offers relocation assistance to new employees
What they value
- AI must be created with safety and human needs at its core
- Encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity