Forward Deployed Engineer - Tokyo

About the Position

Forward Deployed Engineer - Tokyo

OpenAI’s Forward Deployed Engineering team partners with customers to turn research breakthroughs into production systems. We operate at the intersection of customer delivery and core platform development.

Responsibilities

In this role you will:

• Own technical delivery across multiple deployments from first prototype to stable production
• Build full-stack systems that deliver customer value and sharpen how we learn
• Embed closely with customer teams, understand their needs, and guide adoption of what you build
• Scope work, sequence delivery, and remove blockers early
• Make trade-offs between scope, speed, and quality; adjust plans to protect delivery
• Contribute directly in the code when progress or clarity depends on it
• Codify working patterns into tools, playbooks, or building blocks that others can use
• Share field feedback that helps Research and Product understand where the models succeed and where they can improve
• Keep teams moving through clarity and follow-through

Requirements

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Bring 5+ years of engineering or technical deployment experience that includes customer-facing work
• Have scoped and delivered complex systems in fast-moving or ambiguous environments
• Write and review production-grade code across frontend and backend using Python, JavaScript, or comparable stacks
• Have built or deployed systems powered by LLMs or generative models and understand how model behavior affects product experience
• Simplify complexity and make fast, sound decisions under pressure
• Communicate clearly with engineers, product teams, and customer stakeholders
• Spot risks early and adjust without slowing down
• Model calm and judgment when the stakes are high

Location

Tokyo, Japan

Employment Type

Full time

Location Type

Hybrid

About the Company

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.

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.

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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.