Manager, Forward Deployed Engineer
Leads and grows a Forward Deployed Engineering team delivering production systems with frontier models for customers in Tokyo. The role requires 8+ years of engineering or technical delivery experience, management experience, production coding across frontend and backend, and fluency in Japanese and English.
About the job
Responsibilities
- Lead and grow a team of Forward Deployed Engineers delivering production systems with frontier models.
- Own end-to-end delivery outcomes through clarity, speed, tight coordination, and technical quality.
- Codify effective practices into tools, playbooks, and roadmap inputs that create leverage for OpenAI and the wider developer community.
- Identify early indicators in product behavior, customer environments, or delivery practices and raise them with urgency.
- Use judgment to distinguish what requires action from what does not.
- Set a high bar for FDE performance and support individual growth through direct, actionable feedback.
- Define how field teams are staffed and supported so they can scale without added complexity.
- Partner with Product, Research, Sales, and GTM to ensure fieldwork informs roadmap priorities, drives exploration, and supports safe deployment at scale.
Requirements
- 8+ years of engineering or technical delivery experience.
- 2+ years managing high-performing Forward Deployed Engineers or customer-facing engineers.
- Experience leading high-pressure technical projects from prototype to production.
- Ability to write and review production-grade code across frontend and backend systems.
- Ability to simplify complex work and make fast, sound decisions under pressure.
- Ability to elevate team performance through clarity rather than process.
- Ability to operate with urgency in ambiguous or evolving environments.
- Ability to translate field experience into actionable feedback for Product and Research.
- Fluent spoken and written Japanese and English; the interview process includes both languages.
- Resume must be submitted in English.
Additional Information
- Hybrid work model with 3 days per week in the office.
- Up to 40% travel, mainly local.
- Relocation assistance is available to new employees.
Skills
Frontend Development, Backend Development, Production Systems, Technical Delivery, Customer Deployments, Frontier Models, Team Management, Roadmap Planning, Technical Project Management
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