OpenAI

Manager, Applied AI Architect

OpenAI · San Francisco, CA
San Francisco, CA $280K–$300K Posted 2026-10-01
Salary
$280K–$300K
Type
Full-time
Experience
8+ yr

About the role

We’re looking for a Manager, Applied AI Architect to lead a team of Applied AI Architects. In this role, you’ll combine technical leadership, customer engagement, and team development to deliver exceptional customer experiences from pre-sales discovery and solution evaluation through deployment and adoption, driving real business impact.

You’ll guide your team through complex customer challenges, help them navigate ambiguity, and ensure solutions are grounded in both strong technical thinking and clear business value. You’ll also partner closely with Sales, Deployment, Product, Engineering, and Research to create a seamless end-to-end customer journey.

This role is open in our San Francisco or New York office. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.

In this role, you will:

  • Develop and communicate a clear strategic vision for the Applied AI Architect team, ensuring alignment with the company's overarching goals and the evolving needs of our customers.
  • Guide and support a multifaceted team throughout the customer lifecycle, from pre-sales discovery and evaluation through deployment and adoption, ensuring clear technical account plans, measurable customer outcomes, and scalable systems and processes.
  • Act as a trusted escalation point for key customers within your sales segment, helping to address complex technical challenges and ensuring clear communication with executive-level stakeholders.
  • Advocate for the innovative and effective application of our AI technologies across various sectors, positioning the company as a leader in the industry.
  • Ensure your team remains accountable for technical progress and customer outcomes, coordinating specialist support and establishing clear ownership with delivery teams for implementation execution.

You’ll thrive in this role if you:

  • Bring 8+ years of experience in technical customer-facing roles, building and managing C-level technical and business relationships within complex, global organizations.
  • Have 3+ years of experience leading technical pre-sales teams, with a proven track record of hiring, mentoring, and managing high-performing teams.
  • Have successfully led complex sales involving Generative AI or traditional ML solutions, with a solid understanding of network and cloud architectures.
  • Have a humble attitude, an eagerness to help others, and a willingness to learn whatever it takes to support the team and help customers thrive
  • Approach work with humility, a collaborative mindset, and a willingness to learn whatever it takes to support the team and help customers thrive.

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.

OpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy https://cdn.openai.com/policies/global-employee-and-contractor-privacy-policy.pdf

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.

$110K — 10th pctl $270K — 90th pctl
This role’s midpoint $290K vs. market median $180K for Engineering roles
+60%
above median
Based on 10,000+ Engineering roles with disclosed salary ranges tracked on NewJob.
OpenAI

OpenAI

Artificial Intelligence · Private · San Francisco, USA

Stage & Valuation
Private · $300B
Key Investors
Microsoft, SoftBank, NVIDIA
Open roles on NewJob
Most hiring in
Engineering (271) · Operations (51) · Sales (51)
OpenAI develops and deploys advanced artificial intelligence models, including large language models and generative AI systems, aimed at benefiting all of humanity. Their core products include ChatGPT and foundational models for developers and enterprises.
Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning Developer Tools
E
Software Engineer, Host Assurance
San Francisco, CA Hybrid
Engineering
$266K–$445K
E
Data Program Manager, Science
San Francisco, CA Hybrid
Engineering
$207K–$230K
E
Corporate Security Manager - Americas
New York, NY Hybrid
Engineering
$203K–$237K
See all 250+ roles at OpenAI →
A
Manager, Applied AI Architect
Anthropic Seoul, South Korea
Engineering
B
Applied AI Architect - R01572122
Brillio New York, NY Remote
Engineering
$180K–$250K
C
Senior Manager, Applied AI Engineering
CeriBell Sunnyvale, CA
Engineering
$177K–$226K
E
Manager, Applied AI Research
Edmentum United States Remote
Engineering
$145K–$155K
See all Engineering roles →

Interested in this role?

Apply directly on the company site — no recruiter middleman, no account required.

Apply now →
Apply on company site