# Platform Engineer, Forward Deployed Engineering

**Company:** [OpenAI](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/openai)
**Location:** San Francisco, CA
**Role:** GTM Engineering
**Salary:** $230k – $385k/yr
**Experience:** 5+ years
**Skills:** Software Engineering, ml engineering, architecture, refactoring, RBAC, Observability, Python, JavaScript
**Posted:** 2026-02-13

> Platform Engineer on OpenAI's Forward Deployed Engineering team, embedding with customer pods to architect, refactor, and build reusable platform capabilities from real deployment signals. Requires 5+ years shipping 0-to-1 software/ML systems with strong customer-adjacent ownership and systems thinking.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities
- Provide hands-on leverage to customer pods by embedding with customer-tagged FDE teams to support generalization, contributing directly in architecture, product shaping, refactoring, and implementation.
- Turn repeated signals into platform bets: translate cross-customer patterns into crisp hypotheses with clear success criteria, scope, and a validation plan that fits real account constraints.
- Raise the engineering bar through tooling and mentorship: set org-wide quality norms through high-signal code review and pairing, and build lightweight developer tooling that makes good architecture, readability, and correctness the default across FDE.
- Collaborate as part of cross-functional platform teams: partner closely with B2B Product, customer-tagged FDEs, ops, and business partners to bring the right products and platform capabilities to market.
- Lead complex platform capabilities end-to-end when needed: for high-leverage primitives like our Context Platform, act as DRI from requirements through implementation, make key tradeoffs explicit, and pull in customer pods early to keep the work grounded in real deployments.

## Requirements
- 5+ years of software engineering or ML engineering experience with a track record of shipping 0→1 capabilities that other engineers or customers depend on.
- Owned customer-adjacent technical work end-to-end, from scoping and hypothesis-setting through production adoption, and improved outcomes through structured iteration (instrumentation, evals, error analysis, and tightening success criteria over time).
- Built or operated systems where reliability, security, and governance materially shaped design (permissions/RBAC, auditability, data access boundaries, rollout safety, observability, and incident-driven hardening).
- Communicate clearly across engineering, product, go-to-market, and executive audiences, simplifying complex ideas and translating technical tradeoffs into adoption impact, sequencing decisions, and measurable outcomes. You can credibly “pitch” a platform bet in a customer conversation.
- Default to systems thinking: turn ambiguous feedback, failures, and escalations into durable product requirements and reusable platform capabilities, not one-off fixes or bespoke delivery work.

## Nice-to-Haves
- Experience in high-ambiguity, fast-iteration environments (startups or product-centric teams).

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