About the company
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.
Responsibilities
- Craft and continuously refine the strategic vision and operating model for the Startups Applied AI 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 Applied AI 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.
Requirements
- Have 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.
- Have a strong track record of building and leading technical, customer-facing teams in high-growth, ambiguous, or startup-heavy environments.
- Bring strong technical depth across APIs, platform products, AI/ML systems, developer workflows, and production deployment considerations.
- Have experience creating scalable operating models, not just managing one-off customer escalations.
- Are comfortable working directly with founders, CTOs, technical executives, and highly technical ICs.
- Demonstrate strong judgment about when to go deep for a strategic customer versus when to build repeatable mechanisms for the broader segment.
- Can 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.
- Are personally committed to fostering the safe and beneficial development of AI.
Conditions
- Location: San Francisco.
- Department: Go To Market.