Forward Deployed Engineer - US

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 DeployCo
• Identify early signals and escalate 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
• Write and review production-grade code across frontend and backend using JavaScript or Python
• 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