Why This Job is Featured on The SaaS Jobs
Forward Deployed Engineering sits at a distinctive point in modern SaaS, where platform capabilities meet real customer environments. This manager role is notable because it formalises that bridge, owning production deployments while also turning field learnings into product and research signal. In an AI platform context, that linkage between deployment reality and roadmap direction is increasingly central to how SaaS products mature.
From a SaaS career perspective, the position builds depth in end to end delivery, not just implementation. It develops judgement around ambiguous requirements, reliability in production, and the mechanics of coordinating across Product, Research, and go to market functions. Managing a team that repeatedly ships customer facing systems also creates transferable operating muscle for roles that sit between engineering leadership, solutions architecture, and product strategy.
The role suits leaders who prefer being close to outcomes and are comfortable balancing technical quality with business value, without relying on heavy process. It will resonate with managers who like coaching customer facing engineers and translating deployment feedback into clear internal priorities. The hybrid Munich setup and stated travel component point to a hands on leadership style anchored in real customer work.
The section above is editorial commentary from The SaaS Jobs, provided to help SaaS professionals understand the role in a broader industry context.
Job Description
About the team
OpenAI’s Forward Deployed Engineering team partners with customers to turn research breakthroughs into production systems. We operate at the intersection of customer delivery and core platform development.
About the role
As an FDE manager, you’ll lead FDEs through high-stakes, ambiguous customer deployments and own technical and business value outcomes end to end. You’ll grow a team that can operate under pressure and help OpenAI learn from the field.
You’ll partner closely with Product, Research, Sales, and GTM to ensure fieldwork informs roadmap priorities, drives new exploration, and supports safe deployment at scale. Your decisions will influence how OpenAI is trusted by the customers closest to our deployment work. Your success will be measured by how consistently your team ships, how clearly you deliver signal to Research and Product, and how durable your team and delivery model prove to be.
This role is based in Munich. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week. We offer relocation assistance. This role also will require travel up to 25%.
In this role you will
Lead and grow a team of FDE delivering production systems with frontier models.
Own end-to-end delivery outcomes through clarity, speed, tight coordination, and technical quality.
Codify what works into tools, playbooks, and roadmap inputs that create leverage for both OpenAI and our wider developer community.
Notice early indicators and raise them with urgency, whether in product behavior, customer environments, or delivery practices.
Use judgement to distinguish what requires action and what does not.
Set a high bar for FDE performance and support each person’s growth through direct, actionable feedback.
Define how we staff and support field teams that can scale without added complexity.
You might thrive in this role if you
Bring 8+ years of engineering or technical delivery experience, including 2+ years managing high-performing FDE or customer-facing engineers.
Have led high-pressure technical projects from prototype to production.
Write and review production-grade code across frontend and backend using Javascript or Python.
Simplify complex work and make fast, sound decisions under pressure.
Elevate team performance through clarity, not process.
Operate with urgency in ambiguous or evolving environments.
Translate field experience into sharp, actionable feedback for Product and Research.
Build deep trust with your team by modeling calm, focus, and judgment when it matters most.
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.
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