Forward Deployed Engineer

The OpenAI Deployment Company; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Relocation assistance

Travel opportunities

Hybrid work model

Job summary

The OpenAI Deployment Company (DeployCo) is seeking a Founding Forward Deployed Engineer to act as the technical lead on high-stakes customer deployments and own outcomes end-to-end. You will work closely with OpenAI’s core functions to shape roadmap priorities and ensure safe deployment at scale.

Based in San Francisco or New York City, this role offers a hybrid work model with three days in the office and relocation assistance. Up to 50% travel is required as part of customer engagements.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of engineering experience required.
• Ability to lead high-stakes technical projects from prototype to production.
• Strong problem-solving and decision-making under pressure.

Responsibilities

• Act as the technical lead for customer deployments from definition to resolution.
• Deliver outcomes with clarity, speed, and high technical quality.
• Guide deployment strategy and help define DeployCo’s operating model for swift execution.
• Build reusable deployment primitives and playbooks to scale impact.
• Mentor teammates and provide actionable feedback to grow the team.

Skills

Engineering experience

Team leadership

Ambiguity handling

Job description

The OpenAI Deployment Company (“DeployCo”) is the deployment arm of OpenAI, purpose-built to deliver enterprise AI transformation at scale. As model capabilities accelerate, deployment has become the primary constraint to realizing AI value creation within large enterprises. DeployCo bridges that gap.

Our ambition is to build the company that defines AI deployment. We operate at the intersection of cutting-edge AI, enterprise transformation, and scaled services delivery. We partner with enterprise customers to identify where AI can transform their businesses and build solutions leveraging OpenAI’s models and products. We work with many of the world's largest and most influential companies to solve their most complex business challenges using the latest advances in AI.

People who thrive at DeployCo get excited about ambitious and complex work. We are deep believers in the future with AI. We execute quickly, value intellectual honesty, and obsess over the solutions we build for our customers. DeployCo is being built from the ground up as a subsidiary of OpenAI and funded with a partnership of outside investors

About the Role

As a Founding Forward Deployed Engineer, you will operate as a technical lead on high-stakes, ambiguous customer deployments and own both technical and business value outcomes end-to-end. You will set the bar for customer engagement and deployments of our technology, helping establish the foundation for OpenAI Deployment.

You will ramp quickly toward management responsibilities and help grow a team that can operate under pressure to deliver meaningful outcomes for customers. You will also help shape how AI can be leveraged to drive real-world impact, as well as how the team organizes to deliver that impact. You will partner closely with OpenAI’s core functions to ensure field work informs roadmap priorities, drives new exploration, and supports safe deployment at scale.

This role is based in San Francisco or New York City. We use a hybrid work model with three days per week in the office and offer relocation assistance. This role will also require up to 50% travel.

In this role, you will:

• Act as the technical lead for customer engagements, owning problems end-to-end from definition to resolution
• Operate with strong agency, delivering outcomes through clarity, speed, tight coordination, and high technical quality
• Guide deployment strategy and help define DeployCo’s operating model for swift, safe execution
• Define and build deployment primitives that increase both customer impact and engagement velocity
• Operate as a player‑coach, setting a high bar for execution while helping grow the team through direct, actionable feedback
• Codify successful patterns into tools, playbooks, and roadmap inputs that create leverage for Deploy
• CoIdentify early signals and elevate them with urgency—whether in product behavior, customer environments, or delivery practices

You may thrive in this role if you:

• Bring 4+ years of engineering experience
• Have 0→1 experience building reusable capabilities under ambiguity, and can make disciplined standardization-versus-customization decisions instead of defaulting to bespoke work
• Have led high-pressure technical projects from prototype to production
• Simplify complex work and make fast, sound decisions under pressure
• Elevate team performance through clarity rather than process overhead
• Operate with urgency in ambiguous or evolving environments
• Translate field experience into clear, actionable feedback for Product and Research
• Build deep trust with teammates by modeling calm, focus, and strong judgment when it matters most