Manager, Forward Deployed Engineer - Tokyo

OpenAI; United States; Hybrid; USD 152,000 - 203,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Relocation assistance

Hybrid work model

Job summary

OpenAI’s Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) team is seeking a foundational manager based in Tokyo. You will lead a team through high-stakes deployments, shaping technical and business outcomes end to end.

You’ll collaborate with Product, Research, Sales, and GTM to ensure fieldwork informs roadmap, explores new approaches, and supports safe deployment at scale. You will be responsible for building a team that can operate under pressure, ship consistently, and deliver signals to Research and

Qualifications

• Must be bilingual—fluent in Japanese and English (spoken and written).
• Lead and grow a team delivering production systems with frontier models.
• Own end-to-end delivery outcomes with clarity, speed, coordination, and technical quality.

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow a team of FDE delivering production systems with frontier models.
• Own end-to-end delivery outcomes through clarity, speed, tight coordination, and technical quality.
• Codify what works into tools, playbooks, and roadmap inputs for leverage across OpenAI and the developer community.
• Notice early indicators and raise them with urgency in product behavior, customer environments, or delivery practices.
• Use judgement to distinguish actions that are needed from those that are not.
• Set a high bar for FDE performance and support each person’s growth through direct feedback.

Skills

Bilingual Japanese-English

Team leadership

Delivery of production systems

Cross-functional collaboration

Job description

About the Team

OpenAI’s Forward Deployed Engineering team partners with customers to turn research breakthroughs into production systems. We operate at the intersection of customer delivery and core platform development.

About the Role

As a foundational FDE manager, you’ll lead FDE through high-stakes, ambiguous customer deployments and own technical and business value outcomes end to end. You’ll grow a team that can operate under pressure and help OpenAI learn from the field. You’ll partner closely with Product, Research, Sales, and GTM to ensure fieldwork informs roadmap priorities, drives new exploration, and supports safe deployment at scale. Your decisions will influence how OpenAI is trusted by the customers closest to our deployment work. Your success will be measured by how consistently your team ships, how clearly you deliver signal to Research and Product, and how durable your team and delivery model prove to be. This role is based in Tokyo. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees. This role also will require travel up to 40%, although mainly local. To succeed in this position you must be bilingual—fluent in both Japanese and English (spoken and written). Please note that your resume must be submitted in English, and the interview process will include conversations in both languages.

In this role, you will:

• Lead and grow a team of FDE delivering production systems with frontier models
• Own end-to-end delivery outcomes through clarity, speed, tight coordination, and technical quality
• Codify what works into tools, playbooks, and roadmap inputs that create leverage for both OpenAI and our wider developer community
• Notice early indicators and raise them with urgency, whether in product behavior, customer environments, or delivery practices
• Use judgement to distinguish what requires action and what does not
• Set a high bar for FDE performance and support each person’s growth through direct, acti