Technical Deployment Lead - Cleared - US
OpenAI Deployment Company · New York · hybrid
USD 170,000 to 400,000 per year
About the Company
The OpenAI Deployment Company (“DeployCo”) is the deployment arm of OpenAI, purpose-built to deliver enterprise AI transformation at scale. As model capabilities accelerate, deployment has become the primary constraint to realizing AI value creation within large enterprises. DeployCo bridges that gap.
Our ambition is to build the company that defines AI deployment. We operate at the intersection of cutting-edge AI, enterprise transformation, and scaled services delivery. We partner with enterprise customers to identify where AI can transform their businesses and build solutions leveraging OpenAI’s models and products. We work with many of the world's largest and most influential companies to solve their most complex business challenges using the latest advances in AI.
People who thrive at DeployCo get excited about ambitious and complex work. We are deep believers in the future with AI. We execute quickly, value intellectual honesty, and obsess over the solutions we build for our customers.
DeployCo is being built from the ground up as a subsidiary of OpenAI and funded with a partnership of outside investors.
About the Role
We are seeking a Technical Deployment Lead to turn ambitious customer deployments into shipped, adopted systems for customers whose work requires cleared personnel. In this role, you will lead day-to-day technical delivery for complex engagements: translating business outcomes into technical plans, coordinating Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs), researchers, customer engineers, Product, and customer teams, and carrying solutions from prototype through production adoption. This role will report to DeployCo delivery leadership and partner closely with Forward Deployed Engineering, Product, Research, Customer Success, Partnerships, and customer stakeholders.
Your day-to-day will be mapping customer workflows and success criteria, building delivery plans, tracking dependencies, sequencing workstreams, unblocking technical teams, making scope tradeoffs, communicating risks, and driving readiness and change management so deployed systems land in real workflows. For cleared engagements, you will account for access approvals, secure-facility scheduling, and customer security and infrastructure requirements, coordinating delivery and communicating through approved channels. You will also codify reusable patterns, surface field insights, and help turn complex deployments into repeatable operating muscle, respecting customer restrictions on what can be shared or reused.
Success in this role will look like deployments that deliver measurable customer value, reach production reliably, drive adoption, and produce reusable patterns for future engagements while meeting customer security and operational requirements. You will be measured by delivery reliability, quality of technical execution, customer trust, operating leverage, judgment under pressure, and the strength of field signal shared back to Product and Research through approved channels.
An active U.S. government security clearance is required. While TS/SCI with polygraph is preferred, all levels will be considered. Candidates must be able to maintain their clearance and obtain customer-specific access.
For cleared engagements, build within customer-approved environments and account for restrictions on data, connectivity, tooling, and access. Work closely with the Technical Deployment Lead and customer engineers to establish a feasible path from prototype to a system the customer can operate.
This role is based in Washington, D.C., New York, or San Francisco. Candidate location will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis and candidates based elsewhere may be considered depending on customer needs, access requirements, and the ability to work onsite.
We use a hybrid work model with three days per week in the office and offer relocation assistance. Office and secure customer-site arrangements will be discussed case by case. This role will also require up to 50% travel; some work may require access to secure facilities.
In this role, you will:
- Own technical delivery plans for customer workstreams, translating business objectives into milestones, dependencies, acceptance criteria, and operating rhythms.
- Run day-to-day execution across DeployCo, OpenAI, and customer teams, keeping work sequenced, risks visible, blockers resolved, and critical paths protected.
- Embed with customers to map workflows, shape requirements, align technical plans to success criteria, and ensure solutions are adopted in production.
- Partner with FDEs, researchers, product, customer engineers, and customer technical teams to move prototypes through MVP, production readiness, launch, and scale.
- Make pragmatic tradeoffs on scope, sequencing, resourcing, and quality while maintaining trust with technical and executive stakeholders.
- Own value cases and impact measurement, including hypotheses, baselines, KPIs, adoption tracking, and readouts to sponsors.
- Codify reusable delivery patterns, implementation playbooks, evals, and field insights that improve future deployments and inform product roadmap priorities.
- Account for access approvals, secure-facility scheduling, and dependencies on customer security and infrastructure teams in delivery plans.
- Align technical teams and customer stakeholders on readiness criteria for the target environment, including testing, operational ownership, and support.
- Keep sponsors informed through approved channels, with delivery risks and decisions communicated at the appropriate sensitivity level.
You may thrive in this role if you:
- Have 5+ years of customer-facing technical delivery, technical program management, deployment, consulting, solutions engineering, or implementation leadership experience.
- Have led complex, ambiguous, cross-functional technical projects where outcomes depended on tight coordination and fast decision making.
- Are technically fluent enough to pressure-test architectures, integration plans, data and workflow constraints, and production readiness without needing to be the deepest engineer in every domain.
- Move fluidly between system-level strategy and execution-level detail, from executive objectives to ticket-level dependencies.
- Communicate clearly with business leaders, technical teams, and customer stakeholders, especially when tradeoffs involve risk, scope, speed, or adoption.
- Bring strong customer empathy and are willing to spend time onsite with customers when it accelerates delivery and trust.
- Have practical interest or experience in AI/LLM systems and are eager to learn solution patterns, evaluation practices, and production pitfalls.
- Operate well in high-ambiguity environments and bring enough structure to make complex work simple, visible, and shippable.
- Have worked with government, national-security, or other customers operating under clearance and access constraints.
- Can balance delivery momentum with customer security requirements and coordinate effectively when information or access is restricted.
- Have an active U.S. government security clearance. While TS/SCI with polygraph is preferred, all levels will be considered. Candidates must be able to maintain their clearance and obtain customer-specific access.