Applied AI Engineer, Digital Natives
New York City · 8+ years experience · Full-time · Hybrid · Posted Sep 23, 2026
At a glance
- Experience
- 8+ years experience
- Employment
- Full-time
- Workplace
- Hybrid
- Location
- New York City
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.
About the role
- The Applied AI Engineer role in the Digital Native segment involves working with industry-leading technology companies to bring new AI capabilities into products.
- You will combine deep technical judgment, hands-on engineering, and customer leadership to take ambitious ideas from use-case selection and architecture through production launch and scale.
- Success in this role is measured by production systems, sustained adoption, and meaningful customer impact while directly influencing how OpenAI's products evolve.
Responsibilities
- 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.
Requirements
- Bring 8+ years of deep, hands-on technical experience and an eagerness to work closely with customers.
- 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.
Benefits
- Relocation assistance to new employees
Workplace
- Hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week
- Role is based in the NYC office
- Occasional travel is required
Skills
- Python
- JavaScript
- TypeScript
- Agent Architecture Patterns
- Context Engineering
- Evaluation Frameworks
