Deployment Lead (DL), FDE - Tokyo

OpenAI; United States; Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

OpenAI's Forward Deployed Engineering team is seeking a Deployment Lead who defines how we deliver complex systems to customers. You will own delivery end-to-end, embedding with customers to map workflows and success criteria, and drive readiness and change management for adoption.

This high-trust role requires extreme ownership, deep collaboration with researchers, engineers, and customer teams, and the ability to ship on tight timelines in a hybrid Tokyo-based environment.

Responsibilities

• Define how OpenAI delivers complex systems to customers.
• Own delivery end-to-end: embedding with customers to map workflows and success criteria.
• Lead readiness and change management for adoption and ensure components ship on time.

Job description

About the Team

OpenAI's Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) team turns research breakthroughs into production-grade systems. We embed deeply with customers to solve high-leverage problems and act as the delivery engine for our most complex large-scale engagements. We move quickly from prototype to production and surface reusable patterns that shape our platform. We operate at the intersection of deployment and development - working closely with OpenAI Research, Product and Partnerships.

About the Role

As a Deployment Lead (DL), you will define how OpenAI delivers complex systems to customers. You will own how they are built, shipped, and adopted. You’ll translate business outcomes into a technical plan, run day-to-day execution across FDEs, Researchers, and Customer Engineers, and partner with customer teams to ensure delivery supports their goals. You will own delivery end-to-end: embedding with customers to map workflows and success criteria, ensuring components ship on time, and leading readiness and change management for adoption. You’ll track progress, manage dependencies, make sequencing decisions, and drive 0-1 prototypes through MVP and scale. You will also share field insights with Product and Research to guide roadmap and priorities. Success will be measured first and foremost by impact - deployments that deliver measurable value against customer goals, drive adoption, and become critical to their workflows. Additional measures of success include delivery reliability (milestones hit, low reopen/churn), operating leverage (patterns reused across deployments), judgment under pressure, and product impact (field signal that shifts roadmaps/architectures). This is a high-trust, high-autonomy role. Success requires technical project management expertise, extreme ownership of outcomes, and an ability to immerse in customer workflows and partner with customer teams to solve complex engineering problems at pace. This role is based in Tokyo. We use a hybrid work mode.