Manager, Applied AI Architects
Remote • Tokyo, Japan • FullTime
Posted 11d ago
About the job
As the Manager of Applied AI Architects in Tokyo, you will lead a team of senior technical leaders responsible for the technical strategy, customer journey, and path to production value for OpenAI's largest and most complex customers across Japan. Your team will act as the “CTO of the book of business,” partnering with customer executives and technical teams from pre-sales discovery and solution evaluation through deployment, adoption, and measurable business impact. You will set the operating model for how Applied AI Architects own technical account plans across ChatGPT Enterprise, the OpenAI API, Codex, and other agentic AI solutions. In close partnership with Sales leadership and Account Directors, you will help prioritize customer portfolios, allocate technical resources, and ensure business priorities translate into focused use cases, credible architectures, actionable adoption roadmaps, and durable customer value and growth. You will remain accountable for the team's technical outcomes while developing its people and bringing in the right specialists across deployment, implementation, enablement, security, product, research, and partners.
Responsibilities
- Hire, coach, and develop a high-performing team of Applied AI Architects, fostering technical excellence and customer stewardship.
- Define and refine the strategy and operating model for Applied AI Architecture in Japan, aligning company priorities with customer needs.
- Partner with Sales leadership to prioritize accounts, allocate technical resources, and establish technical strategies for key engagements.
- Ensure Applied AI Architects act as primary technical advisors, owning technical account plans and adoption priorities.
- Lead complex customer journeys from executive vision to production deployment and business impact.
- Coach the team on Applied AI architectures covering models, applications, data, integration, security, and deployment.
- Build trusted relationships with C-suite and senior technical leaders, serving as an executive technical sponsor.
- Mobilize internal specialists and partners to remove blockers and deliver a cohesive customer experience.
- Establish a rigorous view of portfolio health, including technical wins, production readiness, and customer impact.
- Translate field patterns into actionable feedback for Product, Engineering, and go-to-market teams.
- Foster a culture of responsible AI deployment, clear ownership, and effective specialist handoffs.
Requirements
- Deep technical acumen in modern AI systems, frontier models, agentic applications, platform technologies, software and cloud architecture, APIs, data integration, identity, security, privacy, evaluation, and enterprise deployment.
- 10+ years of experience in customer-facing technical roles (solutions architecture, solutions engineering, technical account leadership, AI deployment, or technical consulting) with large enterprises.
- 4+ years of people-management experience hiring, coaching, and developing customer-facing technical teams.
- Experience guiding enterprise organizations from technical discovery through production adoption and business impact.
- Outstanding executive communication and presentation skills, with the ability to build credibility with CTOs, CIOs, CISOs, and business leaders.
- Ability to lead a complex portfolio, make thoughtful resource-allocation decisions, and balance regional strategy with hands-on support.
- Strong architectural judgment, knowing when to go deep, coach, or involve specialists.
- Ability to build strong partnerships across Sales, Product, Engineering, Research, and external ecosystems.
- Comfort leading across Japan from Tokyo, adapting to different industries, cultures, and customer operating models.
- Customer-centric approach.