Why This Job is Featured on The SaaS Jobs
This Software Engineer, API SDK role sits at a core junction of the SaaS ecosystem: the developer platform layer. SDKs are often the primary interface between a SaaS API and the teams that build on top of it, so the work has an outsized effect on adoption, reliability, and day to day usability across a broad customer base. In an AI platform context, where product capabilities evolve quickly, the SDK becomes the stabilizing contract that helps external developers keep pace.
From a SaaS career perspective, SDK ownership is a durable specialization that translates across API-first companies. It builds fluency in versioning, backward compatibility, documentation as product surface area, and the operational mechanics of keeping client libraries trustworthy at scale. The listing also signals exposure to automation and generation systems, which is increasingly relevant as SaaS teams standardize multi-language support and reduce maintenance overhead.
This role tends to suit engineers who enjoy sweating interface details, working close to developer feedback loops, and collaborating across product, developer experience, and go to market functions. It also fits someone comfortable balancing engineering rigor with product judgment, especially when shaping how new platform features are presented to external builders.
The section above is editorial commentary from The SaaS Jobs, provided to help SaaS professionals understand the role in a broader industry context.
Job Description
About the Team
Our team brings OpenAI’s most capable technology to the world through our developer platform: the OpenAI API. As the leading AI development platform, our API is used by millions of developers and the majority of enterprises around the world, and powers the majority of AI applications that you may use on a daily basis. The platform supports everything from simple model calls to stateful, multimodal, tool-using applications through the Responses API, Agents SDK, Realtime API, and more. Our SDKs turn that fast-moving platform into reliable, idiomatic developer experiences across languages.
About the Role
We are looking for a software engineer to help build the official SDKs that power the OpenAI API. Currently offered in Python, Node.js, Golang, Java, and Ruby – our SDKs are some of the most popular in the world. You will help shape the developer experience for all new API features, as well as all future versions of our APIs. We are looking for engineers who will sweat the details about SDK design, who love building for AI developers, and who believe in the potential for AI to transform the world for the better. Prior experience building SDKs is lovely, but not absolutely necessary.
In this role, you will:
Define and implement the SDK experience for all new API features, as well as all future versions of our API.
Build and maintain our systems to make SDK maintenance and generation streamlined and automated.
Contribute to our SDK strategy and roadmap, including which languages to support and what features to support.
Collaborate closely with the rest of the API team, our Developer Experience team, and our GTM team to make our SDKs the best in the world.
Work directly with developers adding features, fixing issues, and contributing to documentation.
Your background might look something like:
You love building for other developers, and thrive on feedback from opinionated users
You thrive working in the open source community, and love engaging directly with developers
You can thrive and operate independently in a fast-paced environment with ambiguous requirements and goals
You are an engineer at heart, but are willing to lean into product decisions
You have previous experience maintaining SDKs or building SDK generation software
Compensation Range: $293K - $385K USD
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.
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.
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We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link.
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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.
