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OpenAI's Forward Deployed Engineering team is seeking a Deployment Lead for Life Sciences to define how OpenAI delivers complex AI systems to customers. You will own the end-to-end delivery of next-generation AI capabilities to pharmaceutical companies, clinical research organizations, and data/services providers, focusing on drug discovery, development, and operations workflows.
In this high-trust, high-autonomy role, you will:
- Own technical delivery plans for multiple interdependent workstreams, translating business objectives into roadmaps with clear milestones, dependencies, and acceptance criteria.
- Run day-to-day engineering execution across OpenAI Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs), Researchers, and Customer Engineers, keeping progress unblocked and making real-time trade-off decisions to protect the critical path.
- Embed with Life Sciences customer teams to map workflows, shape tools and integrations, land production deployments, and drive adoption through onboarding and change management.
- Partner with Product and Research teams to ensure platform components and research workstreams align with deployment timelines and goals.
- Codify solution patterns and evaluation frameworks, extracting reusable patterns and packaging field signals to improve product and models.
- Own value cases and ROI measurement, setting impact hypotheses, baselines, and KPIs; conducting pre- and post-deployment measurement and reporting to executive sponsors.
- Shape how OpenAI engages Life Sciences customers and contribute field insights to guide roadmap and priorities.
Success is measured by deployment impact (measurable value against customer goals, adoption, workflow criticality), delivery reliability (milestones hit, low reopen/churn), operating leverage (patterns reused across deployments), judgment under pressure, and product impact (field signal that shifts roadmaps/architectures).
The role is based in New York with a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week. Travel up to 50% is required, with frequent onsite customer engagement (25-50%, sometimes higher). OpenAI offers relocation assistance.
REQUIREMENTS:
- 7+ years of customer-facing technical delivery leadership with expertise in the Life Sciences space
- Track record of successfully leading large, complex, high-stakes customer engagements where customer outcomes depended on tight coordination and fast decision-making, ideally involving AI
- Ability to excel in high-ambiguity environments and simplify complex, dynamic work
- Fluidity between system-level understanding and execution-level detail; ability to dive into customer workflows/data, map constraints, sketch architectures, and move ambiguous problems to shipped systems
- Strategic thinking and pattern-matching ability; capacity to recognize broader trends across deployments and connect customer needs to scalable, reusable solutions
- Strong technical fluency and sharp sequencing instincts; confidence discussing technical details, pressure-testing architectures, and making trade-offs
- Demonstrated experience shipping AI/LLM systems; understanding of solution patterns, integration basics, and production pitfalls
- Executive presence and translation skills; ability to make complex technical trade-offs legible to business leaders and convert strategy into day-to-day technical execution
- Comfort being onsite with customers frequently to accelerate delivery
