--- title: 'Applied AI Engineer, Digital Natives at OpenAI' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/applied-ai-engineer-digital-natives-openai-san-francisco-fyn7vwg36475' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-09-10' --- # Applied AI Engineer, Digital Natives at OpenAI - **Company:** [OpenAI](https://feeny.ai/companies/openai) - **Location:** San Francisco, CA - **Compensation:** $251k–$278k - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** hybrid - **Posted:** 2026-07-08 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-10 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/5c3a17db-62f1-4145-93b0-2f207d4d4af8 ## Job description ## About the team The Applied AI Engineering team is responsible for ensuring the safe and effective deployment of generative AI applications for developers and enterprises. We act as a trusted advisor and thought partner for our API customers, working to build an effective backlog of frontier AI use cases for their industry and drive them to production through strong technical guidance. As an Applied AI Engineer in the Digital Native segment, you’ll work with industry-leading technology companies like Stripe, Uber, and Reddit to bring new AI capabilities into the products their customers use every day. You’ll partner directly with experienced product and engineering teams to turn frontier model capabilities into new features and agentic experiences. The work combines rapid experimentation with the demands of established products: complex systems, real users, and high expectations for quality and performance. Lessons from these deployments inform OpenAI’s product and research teams. ## About the role You will combine deep technical judgment, hands-on engineering, and customer leadership to take ambitious ideas from use-case selection and architecture through prototyping, evaluation, production launch, and scale. You will write and debug code, build evaluation systems, resolve complex integrations, and guide decisions involving model behavior, reliability, latency, cost, safety, security, governance, and operational readiness. Success is measured by production systems, sustained adoption, and meaningful customer impact – not simply activity or successful demonstrations. This is a rare opportunity to work on consequential real-world deployments at the frontier of AI while directly influencing how OpenAI’s products evolve. This role is based in our SF or Seattle office. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees. In this role, you will: - Deeply embed with our most sophisticated and technical platform customers, serving as their technical thought partner in ideating and building novel applications on our API. - Forge relationships with CTOs, AI Product and engineering leaders to ensure their application’s successful deployment at scale. - Proactively provide guidance to our customers on how to maximize business impact from their applications, accelerating their time to value. - Build targeted prototypes, pilots, and model evaluations with customer teams to test product ideas, guide architecture decisions, and inform their product roadmaps. - Collaborate with our Product and Research teams in validating upcoming frontier AI capabilities in customer environments, and deliver high-signal feedback to steer OpenAI’s roadmap. - Scale the Applied AI Engineer function through sharing knowledge and publishing best-practices to our internal and external repositories. - Evaluate emerging model capabilities, developer tools, and implementation patterns, and translate relevant advances into practical recommendations for customer applications. - Work alongside customer teams through on-site workshops and implementation sessions, helping resolve technical challenges and strengthen relationships. This includes occasional travel. You’ll thrive in this role if you: - Bring 8+ years of deep, hands-on technical experience and an eagerness to work closely with customers. Our team consists of former startup founders, software and ML engineers, technical product managers and solution architects. - Have a track record of personally leading complex, production-scale AI/ML systems from ambiguous discovery through production deployment, adoption, and measurable business impact. - Are passionate about being on the forefront of the latest AI industry trends, incl. agent architecture patterns, advanced prompt and context engineering, evaluation frameworks, safety, and security. - Are proficient in Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, or similar languages and are comfortable building production-quality prototypes and reference implementations. - Demonstrate strong technical judgment: know when to go deep personally, when to mobilize specialists, and how to make clear recommendations with incomplete information. - Have a humble attitude and an eagerness to help others with empathy. - Operate with high horsepower, are adept at frequent context switching and working on multiple projects at once with expansive ownership, and ruthlessly prioritize. - Thrive in dynamic environments and can navigate ambiguity with ease. ## 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](https://cdn.openai.com/policies/eeo-policy-statement.pdf). 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](https://form.asana.com/?d=57018692298241&k=5MqR40fZd7jlxVUh5J-UeA). 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](https://form.asana.com/?k=bQ7w9h3iexRlicUdWRiwvg&d=57018692298241). [OpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy](https://cdn.openai.com/policies/global-employee-and-contractor-privacy-policy.pdf) 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. ## About OpenAI ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company with a mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits all of humanity. - **Entity Type**: Private – structured as a nonprofit parent (OpenAI Foundation) governing a for-profit public benefit corporation (OpenAI Group). The company has confidentially submitted a draft S-1 registration statement to the SEC, signaling a potential future IPO. - **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, USA - **Founded**: 2015 - **Founders**: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, John Schulman, Wojciech Zaremba, and others ## Core Business - **Primary industry**: Artificial intelligence research and deployment - **Target customers**: B2B (enterprises via API and platform), B2C (ChatGPT users), and developers (API, open-source models) - **Mission**: To ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) – AI systems that are generally smarter than humans – benefits all of humanity. ## Products & Services - **[ChatGPT](https://openai.com/chatgpt)**: Conversational AI assistant available via web and mobile, used by consumers and integrated into enterprise workflows. - **[GPT-4 API](https://openai.com/product)**: Large language model accessed via API for developers to build AI-powered applications (text generation, summarization, code assistance, etc.). - **[DALL-E](https://openai.com/dall-e-3)**: Image generation model that creates images from natural language descriptions. - **[Whisper](https://openai.com/research/whisper)**: Open-source speech recognition system. - **[OpenAI Agents](https://openai.com/)**: Emerging product category focused on autonomous AI agents that can perform tasks on behalf of users (announced June 2026). ## Market Standing - **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed in the provided sources. Widely reported in the press at ~$300 billion as of early 2026 (post-funding round), but this figure is not confirmed by OpenAI’s official materials. - **Key Metric**: Total funding exceeds $13 billion from Microsoft and other investors. The company has also confidentially filed a draft S-1 with the SEC (see [openai.com](https://openai.com/) – “Confidential submission of draft S-1”). - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Microsoft (strategic partner and largest investor), with additional participation from Thrive Capital, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and others. - **Growth Signals**: Active hiring with 721 open roles posted; expansion into agent-based products; confidential IPO filing; continued deployment of frontier models. ## Competitive Advantages - **First-mover & brand recognition**: ChatGPT became the fastest-growing consumer app in history, establishing OpenAI as the household name in generative AI. - **Research leadership**: Consistently publishes cutting-edge research (GPT-4, DALL-E 3, Whisper, etc.) and attracts top AI talent. - **Compute & infrastructure**: Exclusive partnership with Microsoft provides massive cloud computing resources (Azure) for training and inference. - **Unique governance structure**: The nonprofit parent ensures mission alignment (AGI benefiting humanity) while the for-profit arm can raise capital and scale products. ## Strategic Focus - **Safe AGI development**: Continued emphasis on safety research, alignment, and responsible deployment (e.g., safety systems, model provenance). - **Enterprise expansion**: Growing ChatGPT Enterprise and API offerings for businesses. - **Agentic AI**: Building autonomous agents that can “transform work” (announced June 2026). - **IPO preparation**: Confidential S-1 filing indicates intent to go public, which will require increased financial transparency and governance maturity. ## Why Work Here - **Culture & values**: OpenAI’s stated values include “Humanity first,” “Act with humility,” “Feel the AGI,” and “Ship joy.” Operating principles emphasize agency, creativity, rapid iteration, and intense focus. - **Benefits**: Competitive health insurance, mental healthcare support, 24-week paid birth-parent leave (plus 20 weeks for other parents), generous PTO, annual learning & development stipend, daily meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner), and a domestic conference budget. - **Work environment**: Hybrid/office-based (San Francisco headquarters). The company offers a residency program for researchers and engineers transitioning into AI. - **Impact**: Employees work directly on frontier AI models that shape the industry and society. The mission-driven nature attracts talent passionate about AGI’s societal implications. ## Sources 1. [OpenAI About Page](https://openai.com/about/) 2. [OpenAI Careers Page](https://openai.com/careers/) 3. [OpenAI Job Search](https://openai.com/careers/search) 4. [OpenAI Homepage](https://openai.com/) ## Other roles at OpenAI - [Account Director, Digital Natives](https://feeny.ai/job/account-director-digital-natives-openai-delhi-w85camznm9da) — Delhi, India - [Product Designer, Youth](https://feeny.ai/job/product-designer-youth-openai-san-francisco-y2ejwx2gxsn1) — San Francisco, CA - [Senior Manager, EHS - Robotics](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-manager-ehs-robotics-openai-san-francisco-562ppxrm3e6n) — San Francisco, CA - [Hardware Strategic Sourcing Manager, Optics](https://feeny.ai/job/hardware-strategic-sourcing-manager-optics-openai-san-francisco-vrghp3x83twa) — San Francisco, CA - [Research Program Manager, Governance](https://feeny.ai/job/research-program-manager-governance-openai-san-francisco-t9jpag8tgexs) — San Francisco, CA - [Partnerships Operations Lead, OAI for Government](https://feeny.ai/job/partnerships-operations-lead-oai-for-government-openai-washington-vzejrcam99mr) — Washington, DC - [Technical Program Manager, Manufacturing Operations](https://feeny.ai/job/technical-program-manager-manufacturing-operations-openai-singapore-2px9t2t2dyvy) — Singapore - [Creative Director, Copy](https://feeny.ai/job/creative-director-copy-openai-new-york-jd7jgsad5xr4) — New York, NY - [Engineering Manager, ChatGPT Search Infrastructure](https://feeny.ai/job/engineering-manager-chatgpt-search-infrastructure-openai-san-francisco-hh32vszf6wmn) — San Francisco, CA - [Physical Design Engineer, Forward Deployed Engineering](https://feeny.ai/job/physical-design-engineer-forward-deployed-engineering-openai-san-francisco-qqh4c31zzvj5) — San Francisco, CA