Forward Deployed Software Engineer, Public Sector

About the Team

Join the engineering teams that bring OpenAI’s ideas safely to the world!

The Applied Engineering team works across research, engineering, product, and design to bring OpenAI’s technology to consumers and businesses. We seek to learn from deployment and distribute the benefits of AI, while ensuring that this powerful tool is used responsibly and safely. Safety is more important to us than unfettered growth.

About the Role

We are looking for an outcome-oriented Forward Deployed Software Engineer to deeply partner with our most strategic and high-impact customers in the public sector. As an FDSE you will take on various roles, actively coding and leveraging your software engineering experience throughout the stages of application ideation, development, delivery, and scaling. You will embed directly throughout the project lifecycle, working on-site and being hands-on with every aspect of the solution from design to production.

This role is based in Washington D.C. and San Francisco, CA. Travel to and working from customer sites is required for this role.

In this role, you will:

• Deeply embed with our most strategic public sector customers, serving as their technical thought partner in ideating and directly developing novel full-stack applications on our platform

• Leverage your software engineering expertise in Python and JavaScript to create initial prototypes and contribute back durable product features

• Proactively provide guidance to our customers on how to maximize business impact from their applications, accelerating their time to value

• Forge and manage relationships with our customers’ leadership and stakeholders to ensure their application’s successful deployment and scale

• Collaborate closely with public sector teammates and cross-functional teams across the company to strategically drive our platform towards exceeding customer expectations

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Hold an active US security clearance or ability to obtain/maintain one

• Have 5+ years of software engineering experience, with an emphasis on customer-facing roles

• Proficient in Python, Javascript, and relevant technologies

• Familiar with deployment models, including to cloud platforms (Azure, AWS) and the underlying infrastructure primitives (Kubernetes, Terraform)

• Can proactively identify opportunities for maximizing our customers’ business value through leveraging the OpenAI API

• Own outcomes end-to-end, and are willing to pick up whatever knowledge you're missing to get the job done to ensure both your team and our customers succeed

• Skilled communicator adept at explaining complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences with clarity and concision

• Led complex technical projects and programs with many stakeholders

• Have a humble attitude and an eagerness to help others with empathy

• Operate with high horsepower, are adept at frequent context switching and working on multiple projects at once with expansive ownership, and ruthlessly prioritize

• Thrive in dynamic environments and can navigate ambiguity with ease

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 do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability or any other legally protected status. 

For US Based Candidates: Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this  link .

At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.