Manager, Forward Deployed Engineering

Forward Deployed Engineering Manager

OpenAI's Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) team partners with our customers to turn research breakthroughs into production systems. We embed with users to solve high-leverage problems, move fast from prototype to deployment, and surface reusable patterns that shape our platform. We operate at the intersection of field delivery and internal development, working closely with Product, Research, and Go-To-Market (GTM).

As an FDE manager, you'll lead FDEs through high-stakes, ambiguous customer deployments and own technical and business value outcomes end to end. You'll grow a team that can operate under pressure and help OpenAI learn from the field.

You'll partner closely with Product, Research, Sales, and GTM to ensure fieldwork informs roadmap priorities, drives new exploration, and supports safe deployment at scale. Your decisions will influence how OpenAI is trusted by the customers closest to our deployment work. Your success will be measured by how consistently your team ships, how clearly you deliver signal to Research and Product, and how durable your team and delivery model prove to be.

This role is based in New York City. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week. We offer relocation assistance. This role also will require travel up to 25%.

In this role you will :

• Lead and grow a team of FDE delivering production systems with frontier models
• Own end-to-end delivery outcomes through clarity, speed, tight coordination, and technical quality
• Codify what works into tools, playbooks, and roadmap inputs that create leverage for both OpenAI and our wider developer community
• Notice early indicators and raise them with urgency, whether in product behavior, customer environments, or delivery practices
• Use judgement to distinguish what requires action and what does not
• Set a high bar for FDE performance and support each person's growth through direct, actionable feedback
• Define how we staff and support field teams that can scale without added complexity

You might thrive in this role if you :

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 the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity.

We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do 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 characteristic.

At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.