Engineering Manager, Sensitive Deployments

Engineering Manager · Manager · Full Time

San FranciscoUSD 347k – 490k1mo ago
Apply for this role

Opens OpenAI's application page

Role

What you'll do.

OpenAI is seeking an experienced Engineering Manager for its Sensitive Deployments team within the Integrity group, focusing on high-stakes AI deployments in regulated environments like government and enterprise sectors. The ideal candidate will lead a team of senior engineers, driving complex technology deployments with a strong emphasis on safety, security, and strategic implementation.

Responsibilities

  • Team Leadership: Lead and develop a team of senior engineers working on critical AI deployments
  • Deployment Strategy: Own end-to-end delivery outcomes from prototype to ongoing operations
  • Technical Architecture: Set and maintain high standards for code quality, testing, observability, and reliability
  • Customer Engagement: Partner directly with customer stakeholders to scope work and remove implementation blockers
  • Innovation: Translate field learnings into reusable tools, playbooks, and product requirements

Qualifications

What we look for.

Technical

  • Full-stack Development

    Strong technical depth across software development domains

  • Cloud Infrastructure

    Expertise in cloud platforms, containerization, and deployment strategies

  • Security Architecture

    Understanding of security, encryption, and access control mechanisms

Education

  • Computer Science

    Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related technical field

  • Advanced Certifications

    Cloud certifications or advanced technical training preferred

Experience

  • Engineering Management

    10+ years of engineering experience, including 4+ years managing high-performing engineering teams

  • Deployment Experience

    Proven track record in customer-facing, platform, infrastructure, or applied AI team leadership

Skills

Required

  • Engineering Leadership

    Ability to manage and develop high-performing engineering teams

  • Cloud Infrastructure

    Expertise in cloud platforms like Azure and AWS

  • Production Deployment

    Experience with complex, high-stakes technology deployments

  • Technical Communication

    Capability to engage with senior executives and technical teams

Preferred

  • Government Sector Experience

    Nice to have

    Background in government, defense, or critical infrastructure deployments

  • AI Safety

    Nice to have

    Understanding of AI deployment risks and safety considerations

  • Compliance Knowledge

    Nice to have

    Familiarity with regulatory requirements in sensitive environments

Tech stack

Languages

PythonJavaScriptTypeScript

Frameworks

KubernetesTerraform

Databases

Cloud Databases

Tools

AzureAWS

Other

Identity ManagementCompliance Tools

Compensation

Pay and benefits.

Base·USD 347,000 – 490,000

Equity·Stock options

Benefits

  • Equity Compensation

    Stock options or equity as part of total compensation package

  • Mission-Driven Work

    Opportunity to shape the future of AI with a focus on beneficial technology deployment

  • Professional Development

    Continuous learning opportunities in cutting-edge AI and engineering practices

Process

Interview steps.

  1. 01

    Initial Screening

    Phone or video call with recruiting team to assess basic qualifications

  2. 02

    Technical Interview

    In-depth technical discussion covering engineering leadership and deployment expertise

  3. 03

    Leadership Assessment

    Interviews focusing on team management, strategic thinking, and communication skills

  4. 04

    Final Executive Interview

    Meeting with senior leadership to evaluate cultural fit and strategic alignment

Full posting

Original listing.

About the Team

The Integrity team builds the systems OpenAI uses to understand, prevent, and respond to misuse across our products. We partner with Product, Policy, Safety Systems, User Operations, Security, Legal, Privacy, OpenAI for Government, and research teams to turn policy and threat models into product controls, review workflows, measurement systems, and enforcement paths.

About the Role

We are hiring a Senior Engineering Leader for Integrity's engineering efforts for Sensitive Deployments where model capabilities, customer requirements, deployment environments, privacy considerations, and misuse risks raise the operating bar significantly. These include hyperscaler and government deployments and other high-stakes environments, regulated and high-trust enterprise settings, zero data retention and privacy-constrained deployments. The workloads are increasingly agentic where harm can emerge across a sequence of actions rather than a single prompt.

The Sensitive Deployments Engineering Manager will focus on high-consequence use cases relevant to government deployments and broader deployment-readiness questions for high-risk domains (e.g., healthcare), while building reusable Integrity capabilities for agentic detection and enforcements in these environments.

We're looking for a hands-on engineering leader to guide a team of senior engineers working on OpenAI's most critical deployments. They will lead both the people and technical execution of the team: hiring and developing engineers, setting a high technical bar, and driving ambiguous, high-priority initiatives from early problem definition to durable production outcomes. They will partner closely with Product, Research, Security, Global Affairs, Sales, Solutions, and customer technical teams, while going deep on architecture, infrastructure, and model behavior when needed.

 

In this role, you will:

  • Lead and grow a team of engineers responsible for complex, high-impact deployments of OpenAI technology in sensitive environments.

  • Own end-to-end delivery outcomes across prototype, pilot, production launch, and ongoing operation.

  • Partner directly with senior customer stakeholders, technical teams, and implementation partners to scope work, sequence delivery, and remove blockers.

  • Set and maintain a high bar for architecture, code quality, testing, observability, reliability, security, and operational readiness.

  • Translate field learnings into reusable tools, playbooks, reference architectures, product requirements, and roadmap feedback.

  • Help the team make crisp tradeoffs between speed, quality, security, safety, and customer-specific needs.

  • Serve as a technical escalation point for deployments where ambiguity, urgency, or mission sensitivity is high.

  • Coach engineers on technical judgment, customer communication, prioritization, and operating calmly under pressure.

  • Build team mechanisms that let the group scale without adding unnecessary process or complexity.

You might thrive in this role if you:

  • Bring 10+ years of engineering or technical delivery experience, including 4+ years managing high-performing engineers.

  • Have led customer-facing, forward-deployed, platform, infrastructure, security, or applied AI teams through ambiguous production deployments.

  • Have experience working with government, defense, intelligence, public sector, critical infrastructure, or similarly sensitive/regulated customers.

  • Can credibly engage senior executives, mission owners, security stakeholders, and deeply technical ICs.

  • Have strong technical depth across full-stack software, cloud infrastructure, APIs, data systems, security, and production operations.

  • Are comfortable reviewing or writing production-grade code in Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, or similar languages.

  • Understand deployment models involving Azure, AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform, identity, access controls, encryption, monitoring, and compliance requirements.

  • Can turn one-off customer work into reusable systems, platform capabilities, and durable team practices.

  • Simplify complex work, make fast and sound decisions under pressure, and communicate tradeoffs clearly.

  • Are personally committed to the safe and beneficial deployment of AI.

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.

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. 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.

OpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy

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.

Redirects to OpenAI's application page.

Other roles

More at OpenAI.

View all 126 roles