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OpenAI's Product Design & Manufacturing (PD&M) vertical is seeking a Manufacturing Expert to serve as a hands-on, customer-facing bridge between manufacturing operations and AI deployment. You will lead early customer discovery and advise Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) and account teams on factory context, opportunity fit, and potential impact.
In this role, you will join customer conversations and workshops, bringing deep manufacturing expertise to operators, technical leaders, and senior executives. You will surface and frame high-value manufacturing problems, then advise teams on likely fit, impact, constraints, and adoption considerations. Throughout delivery, you will partner with FDE and customers to keep solutions grounded in operational reality, identify manufacturing risks early, and support adoption and measurable value.
You will serve as the manufacturing expert in the room, bringing credibility across factory processes, production systems, operational constraints, and business tradeoffs. You will help win and expand strategic partnerships by shaping account strategy, executive engagement, compelling use cases, buyer narratives, and credible commercial paths. You will establish a clear operating cadence across priority manufacturing pursuits and deployments, with explicit owners, capacity tradeoffs, risks, decisions, and measures of success.
You will turn lessons from customer and factory-floor work into reusable discovery methods, launch standards, product-feedback loops, and recommendations for product, go-to-market, partnerships, and enablement. You will develop relationships across priority sectors, including automotive, industrial and agricultural equipment, and consumer electronics. You will operate with high agency and low ego, moving fluidly between executive conversations, working sessions, analysis, writing, and delivery follow-through.
Over time, this role could grow into leading OpenAI's manufacturing practice.
QUALIFICATIONS:
- Deep expertise in manufacturing processes and factory operations, with credibility to speak the customer's language and challenge assumptions
- Track record of operating factories or complex production environments, or directly implementing manufacturing solutions with customers
- Strong technology and AI fluency, with learning agility to operate effectively in a fast-moving frontier-technology environment
- Excellent discovery and problem-framing skills, including ability to help customers articulate ambiguous operational needs and advise FDE on fit and impact
- Ability to partner credibly with FDE and technical teams while respecting their ownership of problem selection, scoping, proposals, and architecture
- Evidence of commercial impact in complex technical or industrial environments, including earning executive trust, shaping account strategy, challenging risky or low-value work, and helping win or expand partnerships
- High agency, low ego, sound judgment, and willingness to do detailed work required to move outcomes forward
- Clear, concise communication and exceptional follow-through across factory operators, senior executives, account teams, and cross-functional technical partners
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS:
- Experience with product development, product design, or simulation workflows, including relevant tools, systems, and processes
- Experience with supply-chain processes, systems, or workflows
- Degree in engineering, physics, or related technical field
