Applied AI Engineer, Startups

OpenAI; California (MO); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Relocation assistance

Hybrid work model (3 days in office)

Job summary

OpenAI is seeking a technically proficient Applied AI Engineer to help push the frontier of AI with strategic startup customers. You will guide them from ideation to scale, build novel applications on our API, and collect high-fidelity product and model feedback.

Based in San Francisco or New York with a hybrid model (3 days in office) and relocation assistance; you will collaborate with Sales, Solutions Engineering, Applied Research, and Product teams to maximize value.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience as a software/ML engineer, preferably in a startup.
• Proficient in Python, JavaScript, and AI/LLM best practices.
• Experience building prototypes on top of API platforms.
• Strong end-to-end product development mindset and ability to drive impact.

Responsibilities

• Partner with startup customers to ideate, develop, and scale applications on our API.
• Provide guidance to maximize business impact and accelerate development.
• Prototype and experiment alongside customers to validate use cases.
• Share knowledge and codify best practices with the team.
• Deliver feedback to Product and Research teams and build startup ecosystem relationships.

Skills

Python

JavaScript

AI/LLM

Startup experience

Tools

OpenAI API

Job description

About the team

The Applied AI Engineering team is responsible for ensuring the safe and effective deployment of Generative AI applications for developers and startups. We act as a trusted advisor and thought partner for our customers, working to build an effective backlog of GenAI use cases for their industry and drive them to production through strong technical guidance. OpenAI's customers represent a range of diverse backgrounds and maturity, from early-stage startups to late-stage startups.

About the Role

We are seeking a technically proficient, business-minded Applied AI Engineer to help push the frontier of advanced AI with our strategic startup customers. You'll work with some of the most exciting AI startups in the world, guiding them through ideation, development, delivery, and scaling to accelerate and maximize the value of what they build on our platform. You will have the opportunity to work on the most novel and creative use cases being built on our API, serving as a critical partner in collecting and delivering high-fidelity product and model feedback internally. You will collaborate closely with Sales, Solutions Engineering, Applied Research, and Product teams, and you will report to the Startups Applied AI Lead.

This role is based in our San Francisco or New York offices. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.

In this role, you will:

• Partner closely with strategic startup customers as their technical thought partner to build novel applications on our API, helping them rapidly move from ideation to scale.

• Provide proactive guidance to maximize business impact and accelerate application development.

• Experiment and prototype alongside customers, demonstrating practical use cases.

• Contribute to open-source resources and scale the function by sharing knowledge, codifying best practices, and publishing useful resources.

• Synthesize and deliver valuable feedback to the Product and Research teams.

• Build relationships within the startup ecosystem, serving as a technical partner to both individual customers and the broader community.

You’ll thrive in this role if you:

• Have 5+ years of experience as a software engineer, ML engineer or equivalent, ideally in a startup environment; experience as a founder or founding engineer is highly valued.

• Have passion for startups and a belief in their potential to become future large enterprises.

• Are proficient in Python, JavaScript, and a strong grasp of AI/LLM best practices.

• Built and/or delivered prototypes on top of our API platform.

• Can proactively identify opportunities for maximizing our customers’ business value through leveraging the OpenAI API.

• Own problems end‑to‑end and are willing to pick up whatever knowledge you're missing to get the job done.

• Have a humble attitude, an eagerness to help your colleagues, and a desire to do whatever it takes to make the team succeed.

• Are an effective, high throughput operator who can drive multiple concurrent projects and prioritize ruthlessly.

We are an equal opportunity employer and do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability or any other legally protected status. Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via thislink.

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 entering in the following tasks…

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.

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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.