OpenAI
Manager, Applied AI Engineering (Startups)
$302K–$335K
San Francisco +1 · Hybrid · Manager · Full-time · Posted Aug 31, 2026
- Location
- San Francisco
Mountain View
About the job
Leads and scales the Applied AI Engineering team serving startups, helping customers move from AI experimentation to production while building repeatable support models.
What you'll do
- Set the team’s strategy and operating model; lead, mentor, and grow technical staff.
- Advise startup customers on architecture, technical blockers, and paths to production; serve as an escalation point for priority accounts.
- Develop repeatable deployment resources and relay customer feedback across Sales, Product, Engineering, and Research.
What they ask for
- Strong technical depth across APIs, platform products, AI/ML systems, developer workflows, and production deployment.
- Track record of building and leading technical, customer-facing teams in high-growth, ambiguous, or startup-heavy environments.
- Experience creating scalable operating models.
- Ability to work directly with founders, CTOs, technical executives, and technical individual contributors.
Nice to have
- Experience founding, scaling, or operating within early-stage startups, ideally in technical leadership roles.
- Commitment to fostering the safe and beneficial development of AI.
Pay
$302K – $335K USD base salary
Tools
APIs, AI/ML systems
AI focus
Leads customer-facing technical work to help startups deploy OpenAI technologies and achieve production usage; builds technical partnerships and scalable deployment practices.
Model-written summary · the original posting is authoritative