Field CTO

Details

About the Role

As a Field CTO (Strategic Pursuits), you will serve as a strategic bridge between customers, go-to-market teams, and the product organization. You will partner closely with Sales, Technical Success, and Product to shape high-impact deals, guide customer architecture decisions, and influence the product roadmap based on real-world adoption and feedback.

This is a highly cross-functional, externally facing leadership role for someone who combines deep technical expertise with strong business acumen and customer empathy.

Responsibilities

Customer and Deal Strategy

• Partner with Sales, Product, and Technical Success teams to support complex, high-value deals as a technical and strategic advisor.
• Translate customer business needs into scalable technical solutions and architectures.
• Engage with senior customer stakeholders, including CTO-, CIO-, and VP-level executives, to drive alignment on vision, roadmap, and adoption.
• Lead technical strategy discussions during key deal stages, including discovery, solution design, and executive presentations.

Architecture and Implementation Guidance

• Guide customers on best practices for deploying and scaling AI-driven solutions in production.
• Provide architectural oversight across use cases such as LLM applications, integrations, data pipelines, and security.
• Act as a trusted advisor to ensure long-term success, not just short-term wins.

Product and Feedback Loop

• Bring structured customer insights back to Product and Engineering teams to inform roadmap and prioritization.
• Identify gaps, opportunities, and emerging patterns from customer deployments.
• Influence product direction based on real-world usage, scalability needs, and enterprise requirements.

GTM Strategy and Thought Leadership

• Help shape go-to-market strategies by identifying repeatable patterns across industries and customer segments.
• Develop scalable frameworks, reference architectures, and playbooks for broader field teams.
• Represent the company externally through customer engagements, industry events, and thought leadership.

Requirements

Experience

• 15+ years of experience in technical leadership roles.
• Strong background in enterprise architecture, cloud platforms, and modern software systems.
• Experience supporting enterprise sales cycles or working closely with go-to-market teams.
• Exposure to AI/ML systems, especially LLMs and applied AI use cases, is highly preferred.

Skills and Capabilities

• Ability to translate complex technical concepts into clear business value for non-technical stakeholders.
• Strong problem-solving skills with a bias for action and ownership.
• Excellent communication and executive presence.
• Proven ability to influence without authority across cross-functional teams.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. OpenAI pushes the boundaries of AI system capabilities and seeks to safely deploy them through its products.

OpenAI is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. Background checks are administered in accordance with applicable law. Reasonable accommodations are available to applicants with disabilities.

Benefits

• Base salary of $302,000–$352,000 per year, plus equity.
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance for employees and their families, with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts.
• Pre-tax accounts for health and dependent-care expenses, as well as 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 as required by applicable law.
• Mental health and wellness support.
• Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage.
• Annual learning and development stipend.
• Daily meals in offices and eligible meal delivery credits.
• Relocation support for eligible employees.
• Additional taxable fringe benefits may include charitable donation matching and wellness stipends.

The role is at-will. OpenAI reserves the right to modify base pay and other compensation components based on individual performance, team or company results, or market conditions.