[Remote] AI Deployment Engineering Manager, Startups

Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. They are seeking an AI Deployment Engineering Manager to lead and scale the Startups AI Deployment Engineering team, helping high-growth startups move from experimentation to production and build durable technical partnerships with OpenAI.

Responsibilities

• Craft and continuously refine the strategic vision and operating model for the Startups AI Deployment Engineering team, aligning it with OpenAI’s broader company objectives and the evolving needs of high-growth startup customers
• Lead, mentor, and grow a team of high-performing technical ICs supporting startup customers across AI-native, developer-led, and product-led companies
• Help startups move from early experimentation to production usage by identifying technical blockers, advising on architecture, and driving practical paths to deployment
• Partner closely with Sales to determine where technical engagement can accelerate adoption, production usage, and long-term account growth
• Represent the technical voice of startup customers by synthesizing high-signal feedback, especially around developer experience, product gaps, deployment blockers, model performance, and emerging use cases
• Translate recurring startup needs into repeatable playbooks, starter packs, reference architectures, internal tooling, and customer-facing assets that help the broader team move faster
• Serve as a senior technical escalation point for priority startup customers, including founder-, CTO-, and technical executive-level conversations
• Balance urgent customer needs with OpenAI’s broader product and platform priorities, especially when startups request niche features, bespoke support, or accelerated roadmap changes
• Coach AI Deployment Engineers on technical quality, customer judgment, prioritization, executive communication, and cross-functional partnership
• Partner across Sales, Product, Engineering, Research, and other GTM teams to improve how OpenAI supports startups from early adoption through scaled production usage

Skills

• Proven experience founding, scaling, or operating within early-stage startups, ideally in technical leadership roles where you owned both product or customer outcomes and technical execution
• Strong track record of building and leading technical, customer-facing teams in high-growth, ambiguous, or startup-heavy environments
• Strong technical depth across APIs, platform products, AI/ML systems, developer workflows, and production deployment considerations
• Experience creating scalable operating models, not just managing one-off customer escalations
• Comfortable working directly with founders, CTOs, technical executives, and highly technical ICs
• Strong judgment about when to go deep for a strategic customer versus when to build repeatable mechanisms for the broader segment
• Ability to translate complex technical and product considerations into clear decisions, practical guidance, and customer-facing recommendations
• Operate with speed, iteration, and pragmatic customer impact without sacrificing quality, safety, or OpenAI's long-term platform strategy
• Personal commitment to fostering the safe and beneficial development of AI

Company Overview

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