Manager, Applied AI Engineering (Startups)

About the Team The Applied AI Engineering team partners closely with customers to help them move from experimentation to production with OpenAI’s technologies. We act as trusted technical advisors, working across customer strategy, architecture, deployment, and adoption to help organizations realize meaningful impact from frontier AI. The Startups segment serves fast-moving, high-growth companies that are often building new products, workflows, and businesses directly on top of AI. These customers move quickly, operate with high ambiguity, and expect practical, creative, and technically rigorous partnership. About the Role We are looking for an Applied AI Engineering Manager, Startups to lead and scale the Startups Applied AI Engineering motion. This team helps high-growth startups move quickly from experimentation to production, unlock meaningful usage, and build durable technical partnerships with OpenAI. This leader will operate in a high-velocity customer segment where founders, CTOs, and technical teams expect speed, judgment, and hands-on problem-solving. They will balance team leadership, technical depth, customer prioritization, and cross-functional influence across Sales, Product, Engineering, Research, and broader go-to-market teams. In this role, you will define how OpenAI supports startup customers at scale: identifying where deep technical engagement can unlock outsized impact, building repeatable deployment mechanisms, and ensuring the team can serve a broad and