Why This Job is Featured on The SaaS Jobs
Forward Deployed Software Engineering sits in a distinctive corner of SaaS: it is where a platform’s core capabilities meet real customer environments under production constraints. In this case, the role centers on building solutions on top of OpenAI’s APIs, which reflects a broader shift in SaaS toward AI-native products and integration-heavy deployments rather than standalone applications. The remit spans both delivery and platform feedback, a combination that is increasingly important as API-first vendors mature their enterprise adoption.
For a SaaS career, this kind of position builds durable strengths in solution architecture, iterative delivery, and turning ambiguous business problems into shippable software. It also develops the muscle of translating customer learnings into reusable abstractions, a key lever for scaling any services-adjacent function inside a product company. Close collaboration with Sales, Solutions, and Customer Success mirrors how modern SaaS revenue teams and engineering increasingly operate as a single system.
The role suits engineers who enjoy context switching between product-grade engineering and customer-facing problem solving, and who are comfortable owning outcomes across discovery, build, and deployment. It is a strong match for professionals who want their technical work to influence both customer impact and the evolution of a platform, and who are open to regular in-person collaboration and substantial travel.
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
We are looking for customer-focused software engineers to build effective custom software that leverages OpenAI’s APIs to solve real customer problems. As an FDSWE, you will work with our customers and OpenAI Forward Deployed Engineers to design and implement scalable solutions that solve their most difficult problems. You will design abstractions to solve customer problems, and then use them to scale our speed and quality of delivery across all Forward Deployed engagements.
You will collaborate closely with Sales, Solutions Engineering, Solutions Architects, and Customer Success Managers who work on the same account. You will also work with our Research and Applied Product and Engineering teams to provide insightful customer feedback.
This role is based in Seattle. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week. We offer relocation assistance. Travel up to 50% is required.
In this role, you will:
Embed deeply with strategic customers to understand their business challenges and technical requirements in detail.
Design, architect, and develop full-stack solutions using an experiment-driven, iterative approach.
Prepare detailed scopes of work and project plans for both proof-of-concept prototypes and full production deployments.
Work hands-on with customers' technical teams as a technical expert and trusted advisor, coding side-by-side to drive projects to completion on their infrastructure.
Collaborate with Product, Research and Applied teams to ensure seamless customer experiences, project success and actionable product feedback
Contribute to internal knowledge bases, codifying best practices and sharing insights gained from customer engagements to scale the Forward Deployed Engineering function.
You’ll thrive in this role if you:
7+ years of professional full stack engineering experience (excluding internships) in relevant roles at tech and product-driven companies - customer-facing experience is highly desirable
Former founder, or early engineer at a startup who has built a product from scratch is a plus
Experience with relational databases like Postgres/MySQL
Have a bias for action and willingness to work iteratively with your customers to deliver the right solution that solves their problem.
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.
