Deployment Lead, Life Sciences - NYC

Details

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

As a Deployment Lead for Life Sciences, you will define how OpenAI delivers complex systems to customers. You will own how systems are built, shipped, and adopted; 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.

The role focuses on pharmaceutical companies, clinical research organizations, and other data and services providers. You will deploy next-generation AI capabilities across drug discovery, development, and operations. You will own delivery end to end, from mapping customer workflows and success criteria to ensuring components ship on time and leading readiness, onboarding, adoption, and change management. 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 is measured by measurable customer impact, adoption, delivery reliability, reusable operating patterns, judgment under pressure, and product impact. 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 solve complex engineering problems at pace.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical delivery plan for multiple interdependent workstreams, translating business objectives into roadmaps with milestones, dependencies, and acceptance criteria.
• Run day-to-day engineering execution across OpenAI Forward Deployed Engineering and customer teams.
• Keep progress unblocked and sequenced, making real-time scope and priority trade-offs to protect the critical path.
• Embed with customer teams to land 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 to ensure platform components and research workstreams support deployment goals.
• Codify solution patterns and evaluations, extract reusable patterns, and package field signals to improve products and models.
• Own value cases and return on investment by setting impact hypotheses, baselines, and key performance indicators; run pre- and post-deployment measurement and report to executive sponsors.
• Shape how OpenAI engages with Life Sciences customers.

Requirements

• 7+ years of customer-facing technical delivery leadership experience.
• Expertise in the Life Sciences space.
• A track record of successfully leading large, complex, high-stakes customer engagements involving 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, including diving into customer workflows and data, mapping constraints, sketching architectures, and moving ambiguous problems to shipped systems.
• Strategic thinking and pattern-matching skills, with the ability to 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/LLM systems, with an understanding of solution patterns, integration basics, and production pitfalls.
• Executive presence and the ability to communicate complex technical trade-offs to business leaders and convert strategy into technical execution.
• Willingness to work onsite with customers, often 25–50% and sometimes more.

Work Arrangement

• Hybrid work model with 3 days per week in the office.
• The role is based in New York, with the listing also identifying San Francisco as a location.
• Travel of up to 50% is required.

Benefits

• Base salary of $207,000–$294,000 per year, plus equity.
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance, with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts.
• Pre-tax accounts for health, dependent care, and commuter expenses.
• 401(k) retirement plan with employer match.
• Paid parental, medical, and caregiver leave.
• Paid time off, paid company holidays, office closures, and paid sick or safe time.
• 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 taxable fringe benefits, including charitable donation matching and wellness stipends.