Forward Deployed Engineer (AI)

Location: New York City, United States; hybrid work model with 3 days in the office per week. Travel up to 50% is required.

Salary: $185K–$300K plus equity.

Company

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company building general-purpose artificial intelligence systems and products with a focus on safe, broadly beneficial deployment.

What you will do

• Lead technical delivery across multiple customer deployments, from initial prototypes to stable production systems.
• Build full-stack systems that deliver customer value and support learning from real-world usage.
• Work directly with customer engineering and domain teams to understand needs and guide adoption.
• Scope work, sequence delivery, remove blockers, and make trade-offs between scope, speed, and quality.
• Contribute production-grade code when progress or clarity depends on it, and codify working patterns into tools, playbooks, and reusable building blocks.
• Share field feedback with Research and Product teams to improve model capabilities and product roadmaps.

Requirements

• 5+ years of engineering or technical deployment experience, including customer-facing work.
• Experience scoping and delivering complex systems in fast-moving or ambiguous environments.
• Ability to write and review production-grade frontend and backend code using Python, JavaScript, or comparable stacks.
• Experience building or deploying systems powered by LLMs or generative models, with an understanding of how model behavior affects product experience.
• Ability to simplify complexity and make fast, sound decisions under pressure.
• Clear communication with engineers, product teams, and customer stakeholders.
• Ability to identify risks early, adjust plans without slowing delivery, and maintain calm judgment when stakes are high.

Culture & Benefits

• Work at the intersection of customer delivery and core AI platform development.
• Collaborate with Product, Research, Partnerships, GRC, Security, and GTM teams.
• Hybrid work with three office days per week in New York City.
• Relocation assistance is offered.
• Equity is included in the compensation package.
• OpenAI provides equal employment opportunities and reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities.