Manager, Partner AI Deployment Engineering - AWS
Application analysis
Manager, Partner AI Deployment Engineering - AWS at OpenAI is a forward deployed ai research lab role for engineers who want customer-facing technical work with real deployment ownership.
Reading this role
This Forward Deployed Engineer role centers on embedded customer delivery — discovery, prototyping, integration, and production rollout. Key signals from the listing: AWS, Python, Customer on-site travel, Senior scope.
About OpenAI
OpenAI ships frontier models to real customers through small, high-trust engineering teams. Forward deployed roles sit between product, research, and enterprise buyers. The role is anchored in San Francisco, so expect on-site customer work in that region.
Signals in the listing
Stand out for Manager, Partner AI Deployment Engineering - AWS
- Lead your application with one paragraph tying Manager, Partner AI Deployment Engineering - AWS to a specific customer or deployment you owned — OpenAI hires for shipped outcomes, not tool lists.
- Prepare a 5-minute “week one on site” plan: who you would meet, what you would inspect in their stack, and what artifact you would deliver by day five.
- Show you can go from discovery notes → working integration → production checklist without needing a large internal team.
- This role is tied to San Francisco — mention willingness to work on-site with customers and any existing ties to that market (clients, partners, or domain knowledge).
Stand out at OpenAI
- Demonstrate customer obsession with safety constraints with a concrete example — OpenAI will probe for specifics, not buzzwords.
- Demonstrate writing and communication with a concrete example — OpenAI will probe for specifics, not buzzwords.
- Interview loops emphasize problem decomposition, taste in product, and whether you can earn trust with technical and non-technical stakeholders quickly.
- Read recent engineering blog posts, product launches, and customer stories on openai.com — reference one explicitly in your outreach to show genuine interest.
Tailored from this listing’s title, company, and description. Always verify requirements on the company careers page before applying.
Role description
About the team
The AI Deployment Engineering (ADE) team is responsible for ensuring the safe and effective deployment of generative AI applications for developers and enterprises. We act as trusted advisors and technical partners to customers and ecosystem partners, helping identify high-impact GenAI use cases and driving them into production through strong architectural guidance and hands-on execution. The Partner ADE organization works closely with strategic cloud providers, systems integrators, consultancies, and implementation partners to scale successful deployments of OpenAI technologies. As the leader of the AWS Partner ADE pod, you will manage a team of AI Deployment Engineers focused on enabling AWS-aligned partners and their customers to build, deploy, and operationalize AI applications on OpenAI’s platform.
About the role
We are seeking a Manager, Partner AI Deployment Engineering – AWS to lead a team of AI Deployment Engineers supporting strategic AWS ecosystem partnerships. In this role, you will own the technical success strategy for AWS-aligned partners and help scale repeatable deployment motions. Your team will guide partners and customers through the full AI implementation lifecycle—from solution design and architecture reviews through production deployment, optimization, and adoption growth. You will work cross-functionally with internal and external stakeholders across Sales, Partnerships, Product, Research, and Engineering teams to ensure the voice of partners and customers informs our platform roadmap and deployment strategy. This role requires a blend of technical depth, customer leadership, operational rigor, and people management. Success will be measured through production deployments, partner technical maturity, API adoption growth, team development, and the overall impact of the AWS partner ecosystem. This role is based in our San Francisco office. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees. In this role, you will:
- Lead, mentor, and grow a team of AI Deployment Engineers supporting strategic AWS partner engagements and customer deployments.
- Define the operating model, engagement strategy, and technical priorities for the AWS Partner ADE pod.
- Partner closely with AWS partner leadership, solution architects, delivery organizations, and customer stakeholders to accelerate production adoption of OpenAI technologies.
- Guide teams through complex generative AI and traditional ML deployments, including architecture reviews, implementation planning, security considerations, evaluation strategies, and operational readiness.
- Serve as a senior technical escalation point for critical partner and customer engagements, helping teams navigate ambiguity and drive successful outcomes.
- Collaborate with Product, Research, and Engineering teams to synthesize partner feedback into platform improvements, tooling enhancements, and deployment best practices.
- Develop scalable enablement frameworks, reference architectures, and repeatable deployment patterns that improve partner effectiveness and reduce time-to-production.
- Drive operational excellence across the team, including resource planning, prioritization, hiring, onboarding, performance management, and career development.
- Act as an external thought leader on enterprise AI deployment, cloud-native AI architectures, and responsible AI adoption within the AWS ecosystem.
You might thrive in this role if you:
- Have 8+ years of experience in technical customer-facing roles, including managing executive-level technical and business relationships with enterprise organizations and strategic partners.
- Have 3+ years of experience leading high-performing technical teams in solutions engineering, deployment engineering, forward-deployed engineering, customer engineering, or post-sales environments.
- Have hands-on experience deploying Generative AI and traditional ML systems into production environments, including familiarity with LLM application architectures, evaluation methodologies, orchestration frameworks, and operational best practices.
- Have strong knowledge of AWS cloud infrastructure and modern cloud-native architectures, including networking, security, compute, storage, observability, and application deployment patterns.
- Have experience working with cloud ecosystem partners, systems integrators, consultancies, or technical alliance organizations.
- Have technical depth in software engineering or solution development using languages such as Python, JavaScript, or TypeScript.
- Are comfortable balancing strategic leadership with hands-on technical engagement and operational execution.
- Are an effective communicator who can translate complex technical concepts into clear business outcomes for executives, partners, developers, and customers alike.
- Have a strong sense of ownership, humility, and curiosity, with a willingness to learn quickly and help others succeed in ambiguous, fast-moving environments.
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 we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic. For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement https://cdn.openai.com/policies/eeo-policy-statement.pdf. Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations. To notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant, please submit a report through this form https://form.asana.com/?d=57018692298241&k=5MqR40fZd7jlxVUh5J-UeA. No response will be provided to inquiries unrelated to job posting compliance. We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link https://form.asana.com/?k=bQ7w9h3iexRlicUdWRiwvg&d=57018692298241. OpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy https://cdn.openai.com/policies/global-employee-and-contractor-privacy-policy.pdf 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.