Why This Job is Featured on The SaaS Jobs
This Engineering Manager role stands out in the SaaS landscape because it sits close to the operational core of a product-led organization, applying model-driven systems to real internal workloads across functions like support, sales, finance, and insights. Rather than shipping a single customer-facing feature set, the focus is on building reusable automation and knowledge primitives that can be deployed, observed, and refined against production usage.
For a SaaS career, the signal here is depth in applied AI delivery: translating ambiguous operational problems into software systems, instrumenting them for reliability, and iterating through tight user feedback loops. Experience leading work that spans developer tooling, data and knowledge systems, and workflow automation tends to transfer well across modern SaaS companies adopting AI, particularly where platform thinking and internal enablement drive external outcomes.
This position is best suited to an engineering leader who prefers staying technically involved while guiding a small team, and who is comfortable partnering daily with product, research, and operational stakeholders. It will likely appeal to someone motivated by building new systems from early foundations and validating them directly with end users inside the business.
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
The Cooperative AI team is scaling OpenAI with OpenAI.
We are building a model-powered scaled automated workforce and knowledge system that evolves and learns alongside a human workforce. By leveraging OpenAI’s state-of-the-art models and technologies, some already in production, others still in the lab, we develop systems that reason and work autonomously for a wide variety of operational work.
We leverage real workloads for critical systems across finance, sales, customer support, integrity, product insights, internal operations, and more in order to drive insights into product and industry. We partner closely with internal teams and external customers globally, operating in a hyper-fast feedback loop where many of our users are just a few steps away. This proximity allows us to iterate quickly, validate impact in real time, and accelerate industry impacting learnings and systems builds.
We are a highly multidisciplinary, self-contained team focused on transforming the workplace via smart systems, knowledge, scalable and reliable primitives that apply world-class AI capabilities across domains. Our mission is to learn fast and transform how humans collaborate with AI at scale.
About the Role
We are looking for a hands-on Engineering Manager to lead a small, fast-moving team building AI-powered automation systems that redefine how work gets done across OpenAI.
This role sits at the intersection of applied AI, research, and product engineering. You’ll lead a team that builds systems that know how to learn from humans, and carry real workloads across, sales, support, finance, IT, and more, while staying deeply involved in the technical work.
You will operate in a highly iterative environment, deploying systems directly to internal users, gathering rapid feedback, and evolving solutions in real time.
This is a high-ownership role for someone excited about building 0→1 systems, working closely with customers, and shaping how AI transforms operational work at scale.
What You’ll Do
Lead and grow a small team building applied AI systems for internal operations
Design and build AI-powered automation systems in close proximity to customers
Stay hands-on in architecture and implementation across the full stack
Develop evolving systems spanning developer tools, automation platforms, knowledge graphs, and data systems
Deploy systems directly to internal users and close customers to iterate rapidly based on real-world feedback
Engage frequently with scaled workforces to understand needs and validate solutions
Create systems for visibility and learning in hybrid workforces
Partner with product, research, and ops teams daily
You Might Thrive in This Role If You
Have 12+ years of experience in engineering, including 3+ years of experience in engineering management, and at least 7 years as an IC engineer
Are a hands-on builder who enjoys operating across the stack
Have deep experience applying AI, and are ready to experiment with frontier approaches
Bring strong technical judgment across systems design, infrastructure, and full-stack development
Have built developer tools, internal platforms, or workflow automation systems
Enjoy frequent interaction with customers and thrive in feedback-driven development loops
Are comfortable with ambiguity and excited to operate in a rapidly evolving space
Have experience in operationally complex environments (e.g., logistics, support systems, internal tooling, warehouse automation, etc.)
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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