Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) - SF

Vibehackers; San Francisco, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Relocation assistance

Hybrid work (3 days in office)

Job summary

Vibehackers is seeking a Senior Forward Deployed Engineer in San Francisco to lead end-to-end deployments of frontier models with strategic customers. You will own discovery, scoping, system design, implementation, and production rollout, partnering with customer teams to build full-stack, LLM-powered systems.

Ideal candidates have 5+ years in engineering/deployment, experience with LLMs, strong cross-functional communication, and willingness to travel up to 50%.

Qualifications

• 5+ years engineering or deployment experience.
• Experience with LLMs or generative models.
• Strong communication with stakeholders.
• Hybrid work in San Francisco with 3 days in the office.
• Willing to relocate; travel up to 50%.

Responsibilities

• Lead technical delivery across deployments from prototype to production.
• Build full-stack systems delivering customer value.
• Embed with customer teams to understand needs and guide adoption.
• Scope work, sequence delivery, and manage trade-offs.
• Contribute code when needed and create reusable tools.
• Share field feedback to inform Research and Product teams.

Skills

System design

Full-stack dev

Production deployment

Technical scoping

Customer engagement

Cross-functional collaboration

Job description

Works directly with LLMs and generative models to prototype and productionize AI features; heavy on customer-facing, rapid iteration and deployment of AI-driven systems.

About the Role

Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs) at OpenAI lead end-to-end deployments of frontier models with strategic customers, owning discovery, technical scoping, system design, implementation, and production rollout. The role focuses on building full-stack, LLM-powered systems, driving customer adoption, and feeding field learnings back into product and model roadmaps.

Job Description

Role

Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs) partner with customers to turn research breakthroughs into production systems. FDEs own discovery, technical scoping, system design, building, and production rollouts of frontier models, working directly with customer engineering and domain teams.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead technical delivery across multiple deployments from prototype to stable production.
• Build full-stack systems that deliver customer value and inform product learning.
• Embed with customer teams to understand needs and guide adoption.
• Scope work, sequence delivery, remove blockers, and make trade-offs between scope, speed, and quality.
• Contribute directly in code when needed and codify working patterns into tools, playbooks, or building blocks.
• Share field feedback to inform Research and Product teams and keep cross-functional teams aligned and moving.

Requirements

• 5+ years of engineering or technical deployment experience including customer-facing work.
• Experience scoping and delivering complex systems in fast-moving or ambiguous environments.
• Experience building or deploying systems powered by LLMs or generative models and understanding how model behavior affects product experience.
• Strong communication with engineers, product teams, and customer stakeholders; ability to spot risks, make fast sound decisions, and model calm under pressure.
• Role is based in San Francisco with a hybrid work model requiring 3 days in the office per week.
• Relocation assistance is offered.
• Travel up to 50% is required.

How Success Is Measured

• Production adoption, measurable workflow impact, and evaluation-driven feedback that influences product and model roadmaps.
• Work closely with Product, Research, Partnerships, GRC, Security, and GTM teams to deliver and iterate on deployed systems.

Skills

System Design Full-stack Development Production Deployment Technical Scoping Customer Engagement Cross-functional Collaboration Project Delivery Code Review Risk Management Stakeholder Communication Decision Making Prototyping and Iteration

Experience Level

Senior

Employment Type

FullTime

• Relocation assistance
• Hybrid work (3 days in office per week)
• Reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities