Artificial intelligence
10 OpenAI machine learning engineers
These ten current OpenAI machine learning engineers hold machine learning engineering or Member of Technical Staff roles at the company, and their profiles describe model training, post-training or ML systems work. A reader can learn what machine learning engineering work at OpenAI involves from people who have done it.
Professionals to explore
01—10Alex Paino
LinkedInExperience: Member of Technical Staff · OpenAI
Member of Technical Staff at OpenAI since March 2019; his role description says he manages the Pretraining Data team and was previously on Robotics, and his headline reads Research at OpenAI. He was a Staff Software Engineer (2017–2019) and a Machine Learning Engineer (2014–2017) at Sift.
Hitesh Khandelwal
LinkedInExperience: Member of Technical Staff · OpenAI
Member of Technical Staff at OpenAI since January 2026, with the headline RL/Agent Infra @ OpenAI and a role description covering agent infra for RL training and research. He was a Software Engineer at Facebook from 2012 to 2026, and his profile says that in 2026 at Meta Superintelligence Lab he founded and led the AI Inference Platform (IPnext).
John Zheng
LinkedInExperience: Member of Technical Staff · OpenAI
Member of Technical Staff at OpenAI since June 2026, with a role description that reads AI / ML for ChatGPT. At Meta he held an Engineering Leadership (AI ML) role from 2022 to 2026, where his profile mentions Instagram growth modeling and LLMs for feed and reels recommendations, and he was a Machine Learning Engineer at Pinterest from 2018 to 2022.
Łukasz Kondraciuk
LinkedInExperience: Member of Technical Staff · OpenAI
Member of Technical Staff at OpenAI since August 2022, with the profile headline strawberry (o1) training systems lead @ OpenAI. He was a Research Engineer at Huawei from 2021 to 2022, and earlier held a Software Engineer Intern role at Google (2020) and a Cuda Math Libraries Intern role at NVIDIA (2019).
Martin A.
LinkedInExperience: Member of Technical Staff · OpenAI
Member of Technical Staff at OpenAI since April 2026; the profile headline reads chatgpt & codex @ openai and describes scaling and optimizing AI training infrastructure, and the role description mentions chatgpt engineering. He was a Software Engineer at LinkedIn from 2024 to 2026, after internships at LinkedIn, BlackBerry and Hölmetrics.
Praveen Kumar
LinkedInExperience: Senior Staff Machine Learning Engineer · OpenAI
Senior Staff Machine Learning Engineer at OpenAI since January 2025, based in the London area; his role description summarizes the work as post-training for frontier AI models at OpenAI. He was a Senior Staff Engineer at Google DeepMind (2022–2025), a Staff Machine Learning Engineer at Meta (2018–2022) and a Senior Software Engineer at Google (2008–2018).
Pritam Damania
LinkedInExperience: Member of Technical Staff · OpenAI
Member of Technical Staff at OpenAI since October 2024; his role description says he builds large-scale training and RL systems for LLMs, world models, robotics and Sora. He was a Senior Staff Software Engineer at Tesla (2023–2024), where his profile describes technical lead work in the ML Infra team at Tesla AI, and Software Engineer | Tech Lead at Meta (2018–2023).
Ricky X.
LinkedInExperience: Member of Technical Staff · OpenAI
Member of Technical Staff at OpenAI since January 2025, with a role description that reads Research Platform Runtime - training infrastructure. The profile also lists Senior Software Engineer at Anyscale (2022–2025), describing work as a Ray committer and vLLM contributor, and Production Engineer at Facebook (2021–2022).
Trevor Cai
LinkedInExperience: Member of Technical Staff · OpenAI
Member of Technical Staff at OpenAI since March 2022; his role description says he led GPT-4 training throughput and vision execution. At Google DeepMind he was Staff Software Engineer (2021–2022), Senior Software Engineer (2019–2021) and Software Engineer (2017–2019), and his profile says he built the infrastructure that trained Chinchilla and Gopher.
Wenting Ye
LinkedInExperience: Member of Technical Staff · OpenAI
Member of Technical Staff at OpenAI since August 2026, with a role description that reads Training @ Research. The profile lists Staff Research Engineer at Google DeepMind (2024–2026), Research Engineer at Character.ai (2024), Senior Machine Learning Engineer at TikTok (2022–2024) and Applied Scientist II at Amazon (2022).
Choose the right perspective
Match the person's part of the training stack to your question, since pretraining data, training systems, post-training and product ML each involve different constraints. Consider how long each person has been at OpenAI and where they worked before, because someone who joined in 2019 or 2022 and someone who arrived in 2026 will compare the work against different baselines.
Questions to take into the conversation
- 01What makes training infrastructure for large models harder to run than ML systems at a typical tech company?
- 02How do machine learning engineers and researchers divide work on a large training run?
- 03What would you focus on learning first if you wanted to move into ML engineering at an AI lab?
Reaching OpenAI machine learning engineers
How can I contact one of these OpenAI machine learning engineers?
Pick one of the 10 people on this page and choose "Book a paid call", or describe your project to find others. You offer a fee for a 15-minute call or a written answer, Instant Expert finds the person's work email and sends the invitation, and they decide whether to accept. The list covers 1 company: OpenAI, based on profile data retrieved on October 8, 2026. Being listed here doesn't mean someone has agreed to take calls.
How much does it cost to reach OpenAI machine learning engineers?
You choose the offer, starting at $5 per person. It includes Instant Expert's 20% fee, so an offer that pays the person $100 costs you $125. You're charged only when the person books the call or sends the answer.
What if they don't reply?
You pay nothing. Instant Expert sends follow-up reminders, and if the person hasn't booked or answered within 7 days, the request expires and any hold on your card is released. You can invite several of the 10 people on this list at once and cap your total spend, so you pay only for the ones who accept.
Can an AI agent ask one of these OpenAI machine learning engineers a question?
Yes. An agent with a USDC wallet on Base can ask one question without an Instant Expert account. It names the person, for example by the LinkedIn URL on this page, and pays per ask over x402 (HTTP 402). The person answers in writing or by voice note, and if nobody answers within 7 days, the payment goes back to the wallet automatically. x402 docs
About this directory
This is a professional research starting point based on business profile data retrieved on . Titles and companies reflect that source snapshot and may describe past or present roles. Check the linked profiles for current details. Inclusion does not imply Instant Expert membership or availability.
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