Forward Deployed Software Engineer - Tokyo

About the Team

Over the past year, we have experienced a significant increase in demand for OpenAI's hands-on technical expertise to translate abstract ideas into production applications. We’ve established a Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) team who will work closely with our most strategic customers to deeply understand their use cases and design, build, and implement products for them. As one of our founding FDSWEs, you will deploy these solutions on customer infrastructure for the world's most influential businesses, driving real business impact through our newest models and our own innovations in technical delivery.

About the Role

We are looking for customer-focused software engineers to build effective custom software that leverages OpenAI’s APIs to solve real customer problems. As an FDSWE, you will work with our customers and OpenAI Forward Deployed Engineers to design and implement scalable solutions that solve their most difficult problems. You will design abstractions to solve customer problems, and then use them to scale our speed and quality of delivery across all Forward Deployed engagements.

You will collaborate closely with Sales, Solutions Engineering, Solutions Architects, and Customer Success Managers who work on the same account. You will also work with our Research and Applied Product and Engineering teams to provide insightful customer feedback.

This role is based in Tokyo. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.

To succeed in this position you must be fully bilingual—fluent in both Japanese and English (spoken and written). Please note that your resume must be submitted in English, and the interview process will include conversations in both languages.

In this role, you will:

• Embed deeply with strategic customers to understand their business challenges and technical requirements in detail.

• Design, architect, and develop full-stack solutions using an experiment-driven, iterative approach.

• Prepare detailed scopes of work and project plans for both proof-of-concept prototypes and full production deployments.

• Work hands-on with customers' technical teams as a technical expert and trusted advisor, coding side-by-side to drive projects to completion on their infrastructure.

• Collaborate closely with Sales, Technical Success, and Applied teams to ensure seamless customer experiences, project success and actionable product feedback

• Contribute to internal knowledge bases, codifying best practices and sharing insights gained from customer engagements to scale the Forward Deployed Engineering function.

You’ll thrive in this role if you:

• 7+ years of professional engineering experience (excluding internships) in relevant roles at tech and product-driven companies - customer-facing experience is highly desirable

• Are willing to travel up to 50% and work on-site with customers to build strong relationships and deeply understand their needs.

• Former founder, or early engineer at a startup who has built a product from scratch is a plus

• Are proficient in front-end development using frameworks like React or Next.js, and back-end development skills in Python, Node.js, or similar.

• Some experience with relational databases like Postgres/MySQL

• Interest in AI/ML (direct experience not required)

• Have a bias for action and willingness to work iteratively with your customers to deliver the right solution that solves their problem.

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.

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with applicable law, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act. 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.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link.

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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.