Manager, Applied AI Engineering (Startups)

Details

The Applied AI Engineering team partners closely with customers to help them move from experimentation to production with OpenAI's technologies. The team acts as trusted technical advisors across customer strategy, architecture, deployment, and adoption. The Startups segment serves fast-moving, high-growth companies building products, workflows, and businesses on top of AI.

The Applied AI Engineering Manager, Startups will lead and scale the Startups Applied AI Engineering motion. This role combines team leadership, technical depth, customer prioritization, and cross-functional influence across Sales, Product, Engineering, Research, and go-to-market teams. The manager will define scalable ways to support startup customers, identify opportunities for deep technical engagement, build repeatable deployment mechanisms, and maintain quality and strategic focus across a broad customer base.

Responsibilities

• Craft and continuously refine the strategic vision and operating model for the Startups Applied AI Engineering team.
• Lead, mentor, and grow a team of high-performing technical individual contributors supporting AI-native, developer-led, and product-led startups.
• Help startups move from experimentation to production by identifying technical blockers, advising on architecture, and driving practical deployment paths.
• Partner with Sales to determine where technical engagement can accelerate adoption, production usage, and long-term account growth.
• Represent the technical voice of startup customers by synthesizing feedback about developer experience, product gaps, deployment blockers, model performance, and emerging use cases.
• Translate recurring startup needs into repeatable playbooks, starter packs, reference architectures, internal tooling, and customer-facing assets.
• Serve as a senior technical escalation point for priority startup customers, including founder-, CTO-, and technical executive-level conversations.
• Balance urgent customer needs with product and platform priorities, including requests for niche features, bespoke support, or accelerated roadmap changes.
• Coach Applied AI Engineers on technical quality, customer judgment, prioritization, executive communication, and cross-functional partnership.
• Partner across Sales, Product, Engineering, Research, and other go-to-market teams to improve startup support from early adoption through scaled production usage.

Requirements

• Proven experience founding, scaling, or operating within early-stage startups, ideally in technical leadership roles involving product or customer outcomes and technical execution.
• Strong track record of building and leading technical, customer-facing teams in high-growth, ambiguous, or startup-focused environments.
• Strong technical depth across APIs, platform products, AI/ML systems, developer workflows, and production deployment considerations.
• Experience creating scalable operating models rather than managing only one-off customer escalations.
• Comfort working directly with founders, CTOs, technical executives, and highly technical individual contributors.
• Strong judgment about when to engage deeply with a strategic customer versus when to build repeatable mechanisms for the broader segment.
• Ability to translate complex technical and product considerations into clear decisions, practical guidance, and customer-facing recommendations.
• Ability to operate with speed, iteration, and pragmatic customer impact without sacrificing quality, safety, or OpenAI's long-term platform strategy.
• Personal commitment to fostering the safe and beneficial development of AI.

Success Metrics

• Increased startup account usage, including tokens, requests, and production workloads.
• A strong cadence of successful customer sprints and production-oriented technical engagements.
• High-quality customer stories, founder and CTO satisfaction, and referenceable startup wins.
• Repeatable startup deployment patterns, starter packs, templates, and reference architectures.
• Strong Product and Research feedback loops informed by startup customer needs and emerging use cases.
• A healthy, high-performing team with strong prioritization, clear operating mechanisms, and scalable coverage across a high-demand segment.

Benefits

• Equity, performance-related bonuses for eligible employees, and competitive base pay.
• 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, 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 benefits may include charitable donation matching and wellness stipends.