An OpenAI exec said the company is using a new engineering role to get big customers' projects going fast
OpenAI's international managing director, Oliver Jay, said on Wednesday at the Fortune Brainstorm AI 2025 conference in Singapore that the company has rolled out a new engineering role — the forward-deployed engineer — to help clients with their AI projects.
"This new model for us, hiring our own engineers to help deploy for our largest projects, is something that we see as a really specific way to advance the acceleration of advanced AI into scale production cases," Jay said.
The company has worked with a few "pilot customers" to test this new role, he added.
"We like to deploy and learn from the field, and through that process, we learned a lot of techniques," Jay said.
The term "forward-deployed engineer" was popularized by Palantir, the government-focused software giant. It refers to engineers who embed with clients to fine-tune the product on-site.
Jay said the role was born out of a key bottleneck OpenAI noticed over the past year: Clients need to bridge the gap from trial to production.
AI doesn't work like cloud software, which is straightforward to test and deploy, Jay said.
"As you scale, you need advanced techniques to set guardrails, to evaluate the accuracy and the models," he added. "This is where we solve the latest gap between companies."
Jay's comments come as OpenAI deepens its footprint in Asia, with offices in Singapore, Tokyo, and Seoul. The company's chief strategy officer, Jason Kwon, wrote in an X post in May that growth in ChatGPT's user base in South Korea has been "off the charts."
OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
OpenAI hiring forward-deployed engineers
Earlier this year, OpenAI's global head of forward-deployed engineering, Colin Jarvis, announced in a LinkedIn post that he would be leading the company's new forward-deployed engineering function.
"Our focus is getting our customers to production, whether it's through a zero-to-one novel application of our tech or helping you to scale proven cases," he wrote.
In a LinkedIn post last month, Jarvis said OpenAI is hiring engineering managers to "lead teams tackling the hardest real-world problems with AI," with roles available in San Francisco, New York, Dublin, London, Paris, and Munich.
A current job listing for a forward-deployed engineer based in New York lists compensation between $220,000 and $280,000, plus equity.
OpenAI also posted a similar role in Singapore four months ago, signaling expansion of the team into Asia.
The forward-deployed software engineer model has become a launchpad for startup founders — and a powerful way to land enterprise deals.
A former forward-deployed software engineer at Palantir told Business Insider the role fast-tracked the skills she needed to learn to run a startup successfully.
"It's definitely founder preparation bootcamp," she said. "As a founder, you have to talk to investors, land partnerships, and be outward-facing, but you also have to put your head down, build a product, code, and be inward-facing. It's the same dynamic with being a Forward Deployed Engineer."
On an episode of the "Y Combinator" podcast published last month, YC partner Diana Hu said she and her team have seen founders close "six, seven seven-figure deals" with large enterprises by being forward-deployed engineers.
YC's CEO, Garry Tan, also said on the podcast that this model gives AI startups a chance to outmaneuver giants like Salesforce, Oracle, and Booz Allen.
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