Forward Deployed Engineer - Zurich

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company working to ensure advanced AI systems benefit humanity broadly. The company develops frontier models and brings them into the real world through product deployment and partnerships. OpenAI operates across research, safety, and commercial applications, with teams distributed globally focused on different aspects of AI development and responsible scaling.

The Forward Deployed Engineering team sits between customer success and core platform work. You'll join this group based in Zurich, working hybrid with three days per week in the office. This role takes you from early prototypes through stable production systems, partnering directly with OpenAI's most strategic customers to turn research into working deployments.

Your work will span

• Owning complete technical delivery on multiple deployments, from initial exploration to production stability
• Building full-stack systems that solve customer problems while generating signal that improves OpenAI's products and models
• Working embedded with customer engineering and domain teams to understand their needs and drive adoption
• Defining scope, sequencing delivery milestones, and removing obstacles that slow progress
• Navigating tradeoffs between scope, speed, and quality to protect timelines
• Writing production code yourself when doing so clarifies direction or unblocks progress
• Turning successful patterns into tools, playbooks, and building blocks that scale across other teams
• Bringing field observations back to Research and Product teams to inform where models succeed and where they need work
• Providing the clarity and follow-through that keeps momentum going

You bring at least five years working as an engineer or technical lead, including hands-on customer-facing delivery. You've scoped and shipped complex systems in fast-changing or unclear environments. You write and review production code in Python, JavaScript, or similar stacks across both frontend and backend. You've built or deployed systems using LLMs or generative models and understand how model behavior shapes the user experience.

Beyond technical skills, you cut through complexity and make solid decisions under pressure. You communicate directly with engineers, product teams, and customer stakeholders. You spot risks early and adjust course without losing momentum. You stay calm and thoughtful when stakes are high.

Nice to have: Direct experience deploying generative AI systems in production environments with measurable business impact.

What we offer: Relocation assistance for the Zurich location. Travel up to 50% as needed for customer deployments.