Manager, Applied AI Engineering (Startups)
Remote • San Francisco • FullTime
Posted 14d ago
About the job
OpenAI is seeking an Applied AI Engineering Manager for its Startups segment to lead and scale the team responsible for helping high-growth startups move from experimentation to production with OpenAI's technologies. This role involves acting as a trusted technical advisor, guiding customers through strategy, architecture, deployment, and adoption to achieve meaningful impact. The manager will balance team leadership, technical depth, customer prioritization, and cross-functional collaboration with Sales, Product, Engineering, and Research teams. The position requires defining how OpenAI supports startup customers at scale, identifying opportunities for deep technical engagement, building repeatable deployment mechanisms, and ensuring the team can serve a dynamic customer base effectively.
Responsibilities
- Define and refine the strategic vision and operating model for the Startups Applied AI Engineering team.
- Lead, mentor, and grow a team of technical individual contributors supporting startup customers.
- Assist startups in moving from experimentation to production by identifying technical blockers and advising on architecture.
- Partner with Sales to accelerate customer adoption, production usage, and account growth through technical engagement.
- Synthesize high-signal feedback from startup customers regarding developer experience, product gaps, and model performance.
- Translate recurring startup needs into repeatable playbooks, starter packs, reference architectures, and internal tooling.
- Serve as a senior technical escalation point for priority startup customers.
- Balance urgent customer needs with OpenAI's broader product and platform priorities.
- Coach Applied AI Engineers on technical quality, customer judgment, prioritization, and communication.
- Collaborate across Sales, Product, Engineering, Research, and GTM teams to enhance startup support.
Requirements
- Proven experience founding, scaling, or operating within early-stage startups, ideally in technical leadership roles.
- Strong track record of building and leading technical, customer-facing teams in high-growth or startup-heavy environments.
- Strong technical depth across APIs, platform products, AI/ML systems, developer workflows, and production deployment.
- Experience creating scalable operating models.
- Comfortable working directly with founders, CTOs, technical executives, and highly technical individual contributors.
- Demonstrated strong judgment in balancing deep customer engagement with building repeatable mechanisms.
- Ability to translate complex technical and product considerations into clear guidance and recommendations.
- Ability to operate with speed, iteration, and pragmatic customer impact while maintaining quality and safety.
- Personal commitment to fostering the safe and beneficial development of AI.