About the job
About Our Team
At OpenAI, our Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) organization is at the forefront of bridging product development, engineering, research, and market strategies. We collaborate with design partners to transform innovative platform capabilities into real-world applications, shaping software and creating sustainable products based on genuine customer feedback.
The FDE Platform team plays a crucial role in amplifying the impact of our organization on OpenAI’s platforms and products. We work closely with customer-focused FDE pods, providing essential support in architecture, product development, refactoring, and implementation. This position is ideal for collaborative software engineers eager to innovate and build state-of-the-art products alongside like-minded professionals.
About the Role
As a Platform Engineer within the Forward Deployed Engineering team, you will be instrumental in developing new platform capabilities, rooted in actual customer deployments. You will collaborate with customer-focused FDE engineers who are dedicated to delivering impactful customer outcomes, embedding yourself where your contributions can maximize effectiveness. This involves engaging deeply in architecture, product shaping, refactoring, and the creation of reusable frameworks while ensuring the FDE pods maintain their ownership of customer insights and daily execution. You will also work closely with our B2B Platform Team and other long-term stakeholders to establish early alignment on which elements should be generalized, which should remain specific to customers, and what successful handoff looks like.
No travel is required for this role. The position is available in San Francisco or New York City, utilizing a hybrid work model that includes three days in the office each week. We provide relocation assistance, and while travel is generally less than 10%, it may increase for key projects or launches.
In this Role, You Will
Provide Direct Support to Customer Pods: Collaborate with customer-focused FDE teams to aid in generalization by actively participating in architecture, product shaping, refactoring, and execution.
Transform Customer Insights into Strategic Platform Initiatives: Convert recurring customer signals into clear hypotheses with defined success metrics, project scope, and validation strategies tailored to real-world constraints.
Elevate Engineering Standards: Establish organization-wide quality benchmarks through detailed code reviews and mentorship, while developing lightweight developer tools that prioritize good architecture, readability, and correctness.

