Deployment Lead, FDE - SF

Details

About the Team

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

About the Role

You will define how OpenAI delivers complex systems to customers, owning how they are built, shipped, and adopted. You will translate business outcomes into technical plans, run day-to-day execution across Forward Deployed Engineers, Researchers, and Customer Engineers, and partner with customer teams to ensure delivery supports their goals.

You will own delivery end to end by embedding with customers to map workflows and success criteria, ensuring components ship on time, and leading readiness and change management for adoption. You will track progress, manage dependencies, make sequencing decisions, and drive 0-to-1 prototypes through MVP and scale. You will also share field insights with Product and Research to guide roadmaps and priorities.

Success will be measured primarily by impact, including deployments that deliver measurable value against customer goals, drive adoption, and become critical to customer workflows. Additional measures include delivery reliability, operating leverage, judgment under pressure, and product impact through field signals that influence roadmaps and architectures.

This is a high-trust, high-autonomy role requiring deep technical project management expertise, extreme ownership of outcomes, and the ability to immerse yourself in customer workflows and partner with customer teams to solve complex engineering problems at pace.

The role is based in San Francisco and follows a hybrid work model with three days per week in the office. Travel of up to 50% is required, with customer onsite work often ranging from 25% to 50% or higher. Relocation assistance is available.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical delivery plan for multiple interdependent work streams, translating business objectives into roadmaps with milestones, dependencies, and acceptance criteria.
• Run day-to-day engineering execution across OpenAI FDE and customer teams.
• Track and drive delivery, remove blockers, sequence work, and make real-time scope and priority trade-offs to protect the critical path.
• Embed with customer teams to deliver production deployments and drive adoption.
• Map workflows, shape tools and integrations, translate requirements into delivery plans, and lead onboarding, adoption, and change management.
• Partner with Product and Research so platform components and research work streams land in time to support deployment goals.
• Codify solution patterns and evaluations, extract reusable patterns, and package field signals to improve products and models.
• Own value cases and ROI by setting impact hypotheses, baselines, and KPIs; conducting pre- and post-deployment measurement; and reporting to executive sponsors.
• Shape how OpenAI engages Financial Services customers.

Requirements

• 7+ years of customer-facing technical delivery leadership.
• A track record of successfully leading large, complex, high-stakes customer engagements where outcomes depended on tight coordination and fast decision-making, ideally involving AI.
• Ability to excel in high-ambiguity environments and simplify complex, dynamic work.
• Ability to move between system-level understanding and execution-level detail, dive into customer workflows and data, map constraints, sketch architectures, and move ambiguous problems to shipped systems.
• Strategic thinking and pattern recognition, with the ability to identify broader trends across deployments and connect customer needs to scalable, reusable solutions.
• Strong technical fluency and sequencing instincts, including confidence discussing technical details, pressure-testing architectures, and making trade-offs.
• Experience shipping AI and LLM systems, with an understanding of solution patterns, integration basics, and production pitfalls.
• Strong communication skills and executive presence, including the ability to explain complex technical trade-offs to business leaders and convert strategy into day-to-day technical execution.
• Willingness to work onsite with customers to accelerate delivery.

Benefits

• Base salary of $230,000–$294,000 per year.
• Equity, performance-related bonuses for eligible employees, and comprehensive benefits.
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance, with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts.
• Pre-tax accounts for healthcare, dependent care, commuter expenses, parking, and transit.
• 401(k) retirement plan with employer match.
• Paid parental, medical, and caregiver leave.
• Flexible paid time off for exempt employees and up to 15 days annually for non-exempt employees.
• Paid company holidays and office closures, plus paid sick or safe time as required by applicable law.
• Mental health and wellness support.
• Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage.
• Annual learning and development stipend.
• Daily office meals and eligible meal delivery credits.
• Relocation support for eligible employees.
• Additional benefits may include charitable donation matching and wellness stipends.