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Research Developer Jobs in California (NOW HIRING)

Job Requisition ID # 26WD97951 Research Engineer Autodesk Research - Manufacturing Industry Futures, San Francisco Location: San Francisco, CA Work Arrangement: Hybrid, typically 3+ days on-site ...

Research Engineer, Interpretability Systems 📍 San Francisco Bay Area (On-site) I am partnering with an early-stage AI research lab founded by former frontier-model researchers, focused on ...

As a Research Engineer, you will be responsible for building AI systems that can perform previously impossible tasks and achieve unprecedented levels of performance, requiring strong engineering ...

The Research Engineer will work directly with researchers, technologists, industry partners, and Technology Center staff to design and build experimental systems that connect digital models, physical ...

Research Engineer (Voice / Speech AI) 📍 San Francisco, CA (Onsite) I am seeking a Research Engineer to join a frontier AI research lab building the next generation of real-time conversational ...

About The Role As a Research Engineer at Phonic, you'll sit at the intersection of cutting-edge ML research and production engineering, working directly on the core systems that make Phonic's voice ...

Position Overview We are hiring Research Engineers to develop scalable robotic systems aimed at achieving general-purpose robotic intelligence. In this role, you'll work with researchers and ...

Research Engineer (VLM / Multimodal AI) 📍 Mountain View, CA I am seeking a Research Engineer to join a venture-backed AI and robotics startup building an AI-powered observability platform for ...

The Research Engineer will play a crucial role in building and training AI agents for vulnerability discovery and exploitation. Responsibilities : • Build State-of-the-Art AI Agentic pipelines ...

Optimize both the mechanics and ergonomics of Algo Developer research workflows; this requires developing a deep intuition for research methodologies. * Balance the short term goals of individual ...

Research Engineer

Alameda, CA · On-site

$120K - $175K/yr

The Role - Research Engineer Own difficult, first-principles R&D that unlocks rare-earth metal production at scale. You will design and execute high-temperature experiments, build and operate custom ...

AI Research Engineer Location: San Francisco, CA Sponsorship: No Relocation: No Industry: Data Science Join a Fortune 500 at the top of its field and one that provides custom solutions to over 150,00 ...

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Research Developer information

See California salary details

$15

$59

$74

How much do research developer jobs pay per hour?

As of Jul 15, 2026, the average hourly pay for research developer in California is $59.23, according to ZipRecruiter salary data. Most workers in this role earn between $53.85 and $70.24 per hour, depending on experience, location, and employer.
Infographic showing various Research Developer job openings in California as of July 2026, with employment types broken down into 84% Full Time, 5% Part Time, 2% Temporary, and 9% Contract. Highlights an 82% Physical, 3% Hybrid, and 15% Remote job distribution, with an average salary of $123,208 per year, or $59.2 per hour.
Software Engineer, Research Developer Productivity

Software Engineer, Research Developer Productivity

OpenAI

San Francisco, CA • On-site

$230K - $325K/yr

Full-time

Re-posted 25 days ago


Job description

About the Team
The Fleet team builds core components to enable productive research from small to state of the art scale across OpenAI, with the goal of accelerating progress towards AGI. We frequently collaborate with other teams to speed up the development of new state-of-the-art capabilities.
About the Role
As we scale up with more researchers and engineers joining OpenAI, we seek a pragmatic and passionate engineer with a strong focus on the development experience for both engineers and scientists.
In this role, you will be responsible for building and maintaining systems that allow our research + engineering organization to iteratively develop, test, and deploy new features reliably, with high velocity, and with a frictionless and fast development cycle.
You will help oversee and drive to the vision of how we should build, test and deploy software. You will drive the design of our continuous integration pipelines, testing infrastructure, training and support around our build system. Our current environment relies heavily on Python, Rust, and C++, which you will take ownership of and strive to transform into a state of the art development experience for research.
Ultimately, your role will be to provide the necessary tools and metrics to support our fast-paced culture and ensure a stable, scalable platform for growth, while also fostering a seamless and low friction experience for OpenAI's research.
This role is based in San Francisco, CA. For a San Francisco role, we use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.
You might thrive in this role if you:
  • Have supported large monorepo development and deployment before
  • Are a proficient Python programmer working in large monorepos
  • Are proficient with Docker and Kubernetes
  • Experienced in CI/CD

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.
To notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant, please submit a report through this form. 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.
OpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy
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.