Technical Deployment Lead, Semiconductors

Details

OpenAI’s Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) team turns research breakthroughs into production-grade systems. We embed deeply with customers to solve high-leverage problems and act as the delivery engine for our most complex large-scale engagements. We move quickly from prototype to production and surface reusable patterns that shape our platform. We operate at the intersection of deployment and development — working closely with OpenAI Research, Product and Partnerships.

Role overview

As a Technical Deployment Lead (TDL), you will define how OpenAI delivers complex systems to Semiconductor customers. You will own how solutions are scoped, built, shipped, and adopted across high-value engineering workflows such as RTL design, verification, and physical implementation. You'll translate business outcomes into a technical plan, run day-to-day execution across FDEs, Researchers, and Customer Engineers, and partner with customer teams to ensure delivery supports their goals.

You will focus on the semiconductor vertical to deploy next-generation AI capabilities. You will own delivery end-to-end: embedding with customers to map workflows and success criteria, ensuring components ship on time, and leading readiness and change management for adoption. You’ll track progress, manage dependencies, make sequencing decisions, and drive 0→1 prototypes through MVP and scale. You will also share field insights with Product and Research to guide roadmap and priorities.

Success will be measured first and foremost by impact — deployments that deliver measurable value against customer goals, drive adoption, and become critical to their workflows. Additional measures of success include delivery reliability (milestones hit, low reopen/churn), operating leverage (patterns reused across deployments), judgment under pressure, and product impact (field signal that shifts roadmaps/architectures).

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

This role is based in San Francisco. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week. We offer relocation assistance. Travel between 25–50% is required.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical delivery plan for multiple interdependent work streams, translating customer objectives into a roadmap with milestones, dependencies, and acceptance criteria.
• Run day-to-day engineering execution by tracking and driving delivery across OpenAI FDE and customer teams. Keep progress unblocked and sequenced. Make real-time trade-offs on scope and priority to protect the critical path.
• Embed with Semiconductor customer teams to land production deployments and drive adoption. Map workflows, shape tools/integrations, and translate requirements into a delivery plan.
• Shape production deployments that integrate with customer infrastructure, data systems, and engineering toolchains, including export-controlled environments.
• Partner with Product and Research so platform components and research work streams land in time to support deployment goals.
• Codify solution patterns and evals. Extract reusable patterns and package field signals to improve product and models.
• Own value cases and ROI. Set impact hypotheses, baselines, and KPIs; run pre-/post-deployment measurement and report to exec sponsors.
• Help define how OpenAI engages Semiconductor customers.

Requirements

• 7+ years of customer-facing technical delivery leadership.
• Deep expertise in Semiconductor workflows, including RTL design, verification, EDA tooling, and physical implementation.
• Track record of successfully leading large, complex, high-stakes customer engagements where customer outcomes depended on tight coordination and fast decision making, ideally involving AI.
• Ability to excel in high-ambiguity environments and simplify complex and dynamic work.
• Ability to move fluidly between system-level understanding and execution-level detail; dive into customer workflows/data, map constraints, sketch architectures and move ambiguous problems to shipped systems.
• Strong strategic thinking and pattern-matching to recognize trends across deployments and connect customer needs to scalable solutions.
• Strong technical fluency, confident discussing technical details, pressure-testing architectures, and making trade-offs.
• Experience shipping AI/LLM systems and understanding integration patterns and production pitfalls.
• Executive presence and ability to make complex technical trade-offs legible to business leaders.
• Willingness to be onsite with customers (often 25–50%, sometimes higher).

Benefits

• Salary range $198,000 – $294,000 (offers equity in addition to base pay).
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts.
• Pre-tax accounts for Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and commuter expenses.
• 401(k) retirement plan with employer match.
• Paid parental leave, paid medical and caregiver leave.
• Flexible PTO for exempt employees; paid days off and company holidays.
• Mental health and wellness support; employer-paid basic life and disability coverage.
• Annual learning and development stipend.
• Daily meals in offices and meal delivery credits as eligible.
• Relocation support for eligible employees.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of AI capabilities and seek to safely deploy them through our products. We are an equal opportunity employer and provide reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities.