Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE), Healthcare - SF

Details

OpenAI’s Forward Deployed Engineering team partners with healthcare organizations to deploy production AI systems across clinical, operational, and member-facing workflows. The team works at the boundary of customer deployment and core platform development, using customer engagements to define repeatable architectures, evaluations, integrations, and operating standards for complex, regulated healthcare environments.

The Forward Deployed Engineer will own end-to-end deployments of OpenAI models within healthcare organizations, including payers, providers, health systems, and healthcare technology companies. The role leads technical discovery, architecture, implementation, evaluation, productionization, and handoff, translating complex customer workflows, data, infrastructure, and regulatory constraints into production AI systems.

Success is measured through production adoption, measurable workflow impact, and evaluation loops that establish customer-specific benchmarks, acceptance criteria, and launch readiness. The role collaborates directly with customer technical and operational teams and internal Business, Research, Product, Engineering, and Security partners. Ownership of the technical solution is required; ownership of the commercial or executive relationship is not.

This role is based in San Francisco and follows a hybrid work model with three days in the office per week. Travel up to 50% is required.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical solution end to end, from customer discovery and workflow scoping through architecture, hands-on implementation, evaluation, production deployment, adoption, and handoff.
• Partner with customer engineers, operators, and domain experts to frame ambiguous problems, define scope, and translate payer, provider, or health-system workflows into technical requirements and measurable outcomes.
• Design and implement production AI applications and agentic systems that integrate with customer infrastructure, enterprise APIs, data platforms, electronic health records, claims systems, and operational tools.
• Build appropriate safeguards for protected health information (PHI), HIPAA, privacy, security, authorization, governance, auditability, and other regulated-delivery requirements.
• Define and operationalize evaluations, validation evidence, human-review workflows, escalation paths, and launch criteria that measure model and system quality against customer-specific acceptance thresholds.
• Use evaluation results, error analysis, observability, and customer feedback to improve system reliability, performance, model selection, workflow impact, and production readiness.
• Distill deployment learnings into reference architectures, interoperability and integration patterns, evaluation harnesses, security controls, and reusable technical primitives for healthcare and other regulated enterprise environments.

Requirements

• 6+ years of experience in software engineering, ML/AI engineering, solutions engineering, technical consulting, or comparable work.
• Experience operating as a senior engineer, technical lead, or deployment owner trusted to make technical decisions in ambiguous environments.
• Hands-on ownership of technical discovery, architecture, implementation, evaluation, productionization, and handoff for complex customer-facing or enterprise systems.
• Healthcare experience, including payer workflows, provider operations, EHR systems, or interoperability standards such as Epic, HL7, and FHIR.
• Exposure to provider or health-system workflows such as clinical operations, revenue cycle management, patient access, or contact centers; or to EHR and interoperability technologies such as Epic, Oracle Health/Cerner, MEDITECH, HL7, FHIR, or health information exchanges.
• Experience shipping complex systems as a forward deployed or customer engineer; an engineer inside a payer, provider, or health system; a builder at an EHR, interoperability, revenue cycle, payer-tech, or healthcare infrastructure company; a hands-on technical consultant or integrator; a solutions architect for regulated enterprises; or a technical founder or early engineering leader.
• Strong judgment in AI evaluation, privacy, security, governance, and reliability.
• Prior FDE titles, clinical credentials, and experience across every healthcare domain are not required.

Benefits

• Equity, performance-related bonuses for eligible employees, and medical, dental, and vision insurance.
• 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 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 taxable fringe benefits may include charitable donation matching and wellness stipends.