Ops Lead, Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE)

OpenAI•San Francisco, CA

5d•Hybrid

About The Position

About the team OpenAI’s Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) team partners with customers to turn research breakthroughs into production-grade AI systems. FDE sits at the intersection of Product, Engineering, Research, and GTM. We embed deeply with users to solve high-leverage problems and surface patterns that shape our platform. We take frontier capabilities into the real world and translate customer signal into durable solutions, repeatable patterns, and product direction. About the role We’re hiring an Ops Lead to build, run, and evolve the systems that enable the FDE team to execute at scale. This role sits at the core of the team and directly shapes how effectively we deploy frontier AI in the real world. You’ll turn fast-moving signals from the field and the business into clear operational plans, aligning project demand with FDE capacity, driving staffing decisions, and ensuring the portfolio scales predictably. You will partner closely with Business, Product, and GTM stakeholders to improve how we prioritize, plan, and coordinate. Rather than leading a single program, you’ll run core operating rhythms for the team, such as portfolio reviews, execution tracking, and quarterly planning, ensuring leaders have clear visibility into risks and delivery progress as the organization scales. This is a senior IC role with broad ownership across the FDE operating model. This role is based in San Francisco or NYC. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.

Requirements

Bring 6+ years in technical program management, engineering operations, business operations, or similar operator roles supporting technical teams in fast-paced, high-ambiguity environments.
Have built 0→1 operating mechanisms that scaled a technical team through rapid growth.
Bring alignment to conflicting priorities and resource tradeoffs, driving teams toward measurable outcomes at pace.
Break down ambiguous operational challenges into clear workstreams, anticipate risks early, and make sound decisions under pressure while balancing speed with long-term system health.
Communicate clearly across engineering, product, GTM, and executive audiences, simplifying complexity and translating tradeoffs into actionable decisions.
Influence senior leaders without formal authority, aligning teams with different incentives around clear, shared outcomes.

Responsibilities

Own FDE capacity planning, translating pipeline and active project demand into hiring forecasts.
Run the operating rhythm across portfolio reviews and quarterly planning, ensuring leaders have visibility into priorities, risk, dependencies, and the decisions needed to keep execution moving.
Determine how customer engagements should be staffed across FDE and partner channels, working with GTM and FDE leadership to make explicit tradeoff calls based on scope, strategic value, and capacity constraints.
Codify and evolve the FDE operating model so each subsequent deployment becomes easier to scope and deliver.
Identify and resolve emerging operational bottlenecks as FDE scales, implementing lightweight systems that improve execution without adding unnecessary overhead.