Deployment Lead, Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) - Platform
Forward Deployed Engineering - San Francisco and New York City
About the Team
OpenAI’s Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) team partners with customers to turn research breakthroughs into production systems. Within FDE, the Platform team turns promising use cases into repeatable solutions to deliver at scale.
About the Role
As a foundational Platform Deployment Lead (DL), you’ll shape new solutions and lead them from customer validation through launch and repeatable adoption. You’ll combine product judgment with hands-on customer deployment experience to identify valuable problems and define a path to scale. You’ll also help build the function, navigating significant ambiguity to define its scope and ways of working.
You’ll partner with FDEs, Product, and GTM to align the roadmap, resolve shared dependencies, and balance customer commitments with reusable capabilities.
Success means measurable customer and business impact, growing adoption, and building solutions that field teams or partners can deliver without depending on the originating team.
This role is based in San Francisco or New York City, with 3 days in the office per week, relocation assistance, and travel up to 50%.
In this role, you will:
Define clear solutions around a valuable problem and shape the path to market.
Use customer, field learnings, and market evidence to set the next proof point, narrow scope, and recommend where to invest.
Select design partners and use pilots to test value and repeatability.
Define quality and launch criteria.
Enable field teams and partners to scope, sell, and deliver the solution using playbooks and building the support model they need.
Track adoption and establish ongoing ownership as solutions scale.
You might thrive in this role if you:
Bring 5+ years of product leadership or customer-facing technical delivery experience.
Have taken technical products from discovery through production and adoption.
Translate customer workflows and deployment evidence into clear product priorities.
Can reason through integrations, data, evaluations, and enterprise deployment constraints.
Thrive in ambiguity and enjoy building new functions: creating structure where little exists, making sound decisions with incomplete information, and adapting as priorities evolve.
Build trust and drive decisions across engineering, Product, GTM, partners, and customers.
Understand technical go-to-market and enjoy building new solutions in ambiguous environments.
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 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.
For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.
Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.
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Compensation
$207K – $294K + Offers Equity
The base pay offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factors, including market location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. If the role is non-exempt, overtime pay will be provided consistent with applicable laws. In addition to the salary range listed above, total compensation also includes generous equity, performance-related bonus(es) for eligible employees, and the following benefits.
Medical, dental, and vision insurance for you and your family, with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts
Pre-tax accounts for Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and commuter expenses (parking and transit)
401(k) retirement plan with employer match
Paid parental leave (up to 24 weeks for birth parents and 20 weeks for non-birthing parents), plus paid medical and caregiver leave (up to 8 weeks)
Paid time off: flexible PTO for exempt employees and up to 15 days annually for non-exempt employees
13+ paid company holidays, and multiple paid coordinated company office closures throughout the year for focus and recharge, plus paid sick or safe time (1 hour per 30 hours worked, or more, as required by applicable state or local law)
Mental health and wellness support
Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage
Annual learning and development stipend to fuel your professional growth
Daily meals in our offices, and meal delivery credits as eligible
Relocation support for eligible employees
Additional taxable fringe benefits, such as charitable donation matching and wellness stipends, may also be provided.
More details about our benefits are available to candidates during the hiring process.
This role is at-will and OpenAI reserves the right to modify base pay and other compensation components at any time based on individual performance, team or company results, or market conditions.