Description
Compensation
The base pay offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factors, including market location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. The salary range for this role is $185K – $300K, with generous equity, performance-related bonuses for eligible employees, and the following benefits.
Benefits include:
- 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
- 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
About the team
The Forward Deployed Engineering team at OpenAI partners with customers to turn research breakthroughs into production systems. We operate at the intersection of customer delivery and core platform development.
About the role
As a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE), you will lead complex end-to-end deployments of frontier models in production alongside our most strategic customers. You will own discovery, technical scoping, system design, build, and production rollout, partnering directly with customer engineering and domain teams. Success will be measured through production adoption, measurable workflow impact, and eval-driven feedback that changes product and model roadmaps. You'll work closely with our Product, Research, Partnerships, GRC, Security, and GTM teams.
Responsibilities
- Own technical delivery across multiple deployments from first prototype to stable production
- Build full-stack systems that deliver customer value and sharpen how we learn
- Embed closely with customer teams, understand their needs, and guide adoption of what you build
- Scope work, sequence delivery, and remove blockers early
- Make trade-offs between scope, speed, and quality; adjust plans to protect delivery
- Contribute directly in the code when progress or clarity depends on it
- Codify working patterns into tools, playbooks, or building blocks that others can use
- Share field feedback that helps Research and Product understand where the models succeed and where they can improve
- Keep teams moving through clarity and follow-through
Requirements
- Bring 5+ years of engineering or technical deployment experience that includes customer-facing work
- Have scoped and delivered complex systems in fast-moving or ambiguous environments
- Write and review production-grade code across frontend and backend using Python, JavaScript, or comparable stacks
- Have built or deployed systems powered by LLMs or generative models and understand how model behaviour affects product experience
- Simplify complexity and make fast, sound decisions under pressure
- Communicate clearly with engineers, product teams, and customer stakeholders
- Spot risks early and adjust without slowing down
- Model calm and judgment when the stakes are high