Manager, Forward Deployed Engineer - Tokyo

The role

You will lead and grow a team of Forward Deployed Engineers delivering production systems with frontier models. You will own technical and business value outcomes and partner with Product, Research, Sales, and GTM to inform roadmap priorities.

What you will do

• Lead and grow a team of FDE delivering production systems with frontier models
• Own end-to-end delivery outcomes through clarity, speed, tight coordination, and technical quality
• Codify what works into tools, playbooks, and roadmap inputs
• Notice early indicators and raise them with urgency
• Use judgement to distinguish what requires action and what does not
• Set a high bar for FDE performance and support each person's growth through direct, actionable feedback
• Define how we staff and support field teams that can scale without added complexity

Required qualifications

• Bilingual—fluent in both Japanese and English (spoken and written)
• 8+ years of engineering or technical delivery experience
• 2+ years managing high-performing FDE or customer-facing engineers
• Led high-pressure technical projects from prototype to production
• Write and review production-grade code across frontend and backend

Nice to have

• Simplify complex work and make fast, sound decisions under pressure
• Elevate team performance through clarity, not process
• Operate with urgency in ambiguous or evolving environments
• Translate field experience into sharp, actionable feedback for Product and Research
• Build deep trust with your team by modeling calm, focus, and judgment

Benefits

• Relocation assistance

Before you apply

• Resume must be submitted in English
• Interview process will include conversations in both Japanese and English

About the company

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity.