Engineering Manager, Multimodal (API)

OpenAI; Los Angeles (CA); On-site; USD 293,000 - 385,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading technology company in San Francisco is seeking an experienced Engineering Manager for its multimodal API product suite. The candidate will lead a high-performing engineering team responsible for innovative real-time processing APIs, including speech and image generation. The ideal candidate has proven experience managing engineering teams, a strong technical background, and familiarity with multimodal AI. This role offers a competitive salary between $293K and $385K, along with equity and is in-person at the San Francisco office.

Qualifications

• Proven experience managing engineering teams that deliver complex, high-quality products at scale.
• Strong technical background and proficiency in modern software engineering practices and system architecture.
• Excellent collaboration and communication skills.
• Familiarity with or strong interest in multimodal AI, including speech technologies.
• Ability to operate effectively in a fast-paced, ambiguous startup environment.

Responsibilities

• Build, mentor, and grow a high-performing engineering team.
• Collaborate closely with product managers, designers, and other stakeholders.
• Work closely with research teams to improve core multimodal models.
• Guide technical and architectural decisions emphasizing scalability and user experience.
• Foster a culture of innovation and accountability within your team.

Skills

Team management

Software engineering practices

Collaboration

Multimodal AI interest

Adaptability in startup environment

Tools

Cloud platforms

Distributed architectures

Job description

Engineering Manager, Multimodal (API)

Location: San Francisco

About the Team

OpenAI's mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits all of humanity. Our API is the industry's most widely adopted AI platform, empowering startups, indie developers, and Fortune 500 companies alike. Through multimodal APIs—including real‑time interactions, text‑to‑speech (TTS), speech generation, and image generation—we enable users to harness the full potential of diverse AI modalities effectively and at scale.

About the Role

We are seeking an Engineering Manager to lead our multimodal API product suite. Your team will be responsible for delivering innovative APIs across real‑time processing, speech transcription, speech generation, and image creation. You will own the product roadmap for how we evolve our multimodal API offerings, and you will build the products that allow developers to reach millions of end users through AI audio, video, and images.

In this role, you will:

• Build, mentor, and grow a high‑performing engineering team focused on multimodal API products—including our realtime API, our transcription models (Whisper), our speech generation models (TTS), and our image generation APIs (DALLE and native 4o).
• Collaborate closely with product managers, designers, and other stakeholders to define the strategic vision and product roadmap.
• Work closely with our research teams to improve our core multimodal models for API customer use cases.
• Guide technical and architectural decisions, emphasizing scalability, robustness, and user experience.
• Foster a culture of innovation, continuous improvement, and accountability within your team.

Qualifications

• Proven experience managing engineering teams that deliver complex, high‑quality products at scale.
• Strong technical background and proficiency in modern software engineering practices and system architecture.
• Excellent collaboration and communication skills to effectively coordinate across diverse teams and stakeholders.
• Familiarity with or strong interest in multimodal AI, including speech technologies, real‑time systems, and image generation.
• Ability to operate effectively in a fast‑paced, ambiguous startup environment.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience developing multimodal systems or APIs in AI/ML domains, especially around image generation, audio generation, or speech transcription.
• Familiarity with real‑time streaming technologies, audio processing, and computer vision.
• Hands‑on experience with cloud platforms and distributed architectures.

Location

This role is in‑person at our San Francisco office.

Compensation

$293K – $385K + Equity

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.