Manager, Forward Deployed Engineering - NYC
Why it's interesting
The clearest sign yet that OpenAI is building the same FDE org-chart Anthropic revealed two weeks ago: a dedicated people-manager seat over the FDE bench, paying $302K–$385K — more than the $185K–$300K vertical IC seats (Legal, Healthcare) posted the same month. Management layers arriving this fast means the FDE function has outgrown "a few founding hires" at both labs simultaneously.
The role
Lead a team of Forward Deployed Engineers through high-stakes, ambiguous customer deployments, owning technical and business outcomes end-to-end; grow and coach the team, build scalable tools and playbooks, and translate field insight into product and research feedback. Wants 10+ years of engineering/technical delivery experience with 2+ years managing customer-facing engineers, a track record shipping under pressure from prototype to production, and strong JS/Python coding ability. Hybrid, NYC, up to 25% travel.
Applications go directly to the company. We curate; we don't broker.