Residency 2026

About the Program

The OpenAI Residency is a six-month program designed to identify, mentor, and develop exceptional individuals with the potential to make outsized contributions to frontier AI research.

Residents join OpenAI as full-time employees, embedding within Research teams to work on cutting-edge problems under the mentorship of senior researchers and engineers.

Our goal is to build a talent discovery engine, finding people whose learning velocity, originality, and technical creativity signal the potential to become future leaders in AI research and development.

We’re open to a wide range of backgrounds from self-taught engineers and independent builders to researchers in fields like mathematics, physics, or neuroscience. OpenAI has long been home to unconventional talent, and the Residency is our way of continuing that tradition.

If you’re obsessed with AI, think deeply about how to build or understand intelligence, and have a history of creating or achieving remarkable things, we want to hear from you.

About the Role

As a Resident, you’ll embed with one of OpenAI’s Research teams for six months, working on ambitious projects that push the boundaries of AI. You’ll receive direct mentorship from experienced researchers, learn to design and execute experiments, and contribute to real research directions.

Residents are expected to ramp quickly and contribute meaningfully during the program. Some Residents may be considered for full-time roles at the end of the program based on performance and business needs.

This role is based in San Francisco, CA, with a hybrid, in-person collaboration schedule. Relocation assistance is available.

Who We’re Looking For

We’re looking for individuals who demonstrate strong technical ability and steep growth potential, regardless of formal credentials. We value trajectory over any particular archetype.

You might be:

• A creative builder, hacker, or early-stage founder with a track record of turning ambitious ideas into working prototypes, tools, or products that push the frontier of what’s possible.

• An engineer or researcher who learns quickly, thrives in unstructured environments, and loves solving open-ended technical problems.

• A cross-disciplinary researcher from an adjacent field such as physics, mathematics, quantitative research, or neuroscience who’s drawn to the core scientific questions of intelligence.

• An independent thinker who pursues ideas outside conventional paths through self-study, open-source work, or personal research projects.

• A proven problem solver, for example through Olympiads, hackathons, or other high-signal achievements, with the technical ability to tackle hard problems.

Residents

• Should be open to consideration for full-time roles after the program.

• Must be extremely proficient in programming languages and software development.

• Must be very comfortable with advanced math concepts in linear algebra, statistics, probability, and calculus.

• Must be able to independently build or execute complex technical projects.
  

Preferred Qualifications

• Achievements or recognition in any technical or creative field (e.g., competition awards, impactful projects or publications, or open-source contributions).

• Evidence of self-study in machine learning fundamentals.

• Clear signals of originality, experimentation, or rapid learning.

• Motivation to discover AI breakthroughs and their potential benefits to humanity.

Application and Interview Timeline

• We expect to review applications and start interviewing as early as January 2026.

• The interview process for this role will include multiple technical assessments over the course of several weeks.

• Start dates are flexible and based on team availability.

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.