Program Manager, Forward Deployed Engineering

About the team

OpenAI’s Forward Deployed Engineering team partners with customers to turn research breakthroughs into production systems. We embed deeply with users to solve high-leverage problems. We move quickly from prototype to deployment and surface patterns that shape the platform. We operate at the intersection of customer delivery and core development. We work closely with Product, Research, and Go-To-Market (GTM).

About the role

As our Program Manager for our Forward Deployed Engineering team, you will take on work that moves OpenAI’s business forward. You'll build and run the core operating system for the team and ensure the FDE organizations functions smoothly.

This role is based in San Francisco. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.

In this role, you will:

• Run FDE’s core operating system — including planning cadences, standups, issue/risk tracking, resourcing flows, and stakeholder communication.

• Lead coordination across key workstreams: capacity & staffing, platform integration, high-priority customer deployments, and field-to-research signal loops.

• Drive org-level planning in partnership with Head of Forward Deployed, ensuring clarity on priorities, resourcing, and execution pathways.

• Provide leverage to FDE leaders by anticipating needs, resolving operational bottlenecks, and enabling engineers to focus on high-value delivery.

You’ll thrive in this role if you:

• Have experience as a Program Manager or Technical Program Manager in a fast-moving engineering or product organization

• Take initiative, move projects forward, and finish what you start without drift

• Learn quickly, switch contexts fluidly, and thrive on solving new problems

• Know when to bring in others for speed or judgment and never get stuck alone

• Communicate simply and clearly, even when the work is complex

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.

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with applicable law, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act. 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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