Manager, Applied AI Architects

About the Team

The Applied AI Architect team partners with organizations to turn OpenAIs most capable models into meaningful real-world impact. We work with customers across industries to identify where AI can create value design secure and scalable solutions and help those solutions move from early exploration into sustained production adoption. The team brings together technical strategy customer partnership and practical deployment expertise working closely with Sales Product Engineering Research and specialist delivery teams.

About the Role

As the Manager of Applied AI Architects in Munich you will lead a team of senior technical leaders responsible for the technical strategy customer journey and path to production value for OpenAIs largest and most complex customers across the DACH region. Your team will act as the CTO of the book of business partnering with customer executives and technical teams from pre-sales discovery and solution evaluation through deployment adoption and measurable business impact.

You will set the operating model for how Applied AI Architects own technical account plans across ChatGPT Enterprise the OpenAI API Codex and other agentic AI close partnership with Sales leadership and Account Directors you will help prioritize customer portfolios allocate technical resources and ensure business priorities translate into focused use cases credible architectures actionable adoption roadmaps and durable customer value and growth.

You will remain accountable for the teams technical outcomes while developing its people and bringing in the right specialists across deployment implementation enablement security product research and partners. You will serve as an executive technical sponsor for critical engagements a senior voice of the customer inside OpenAI and a cross-functional leader who can move confidently between regional strategy executive decision-making architectural depth and hands-on coaching.

This role is based in Munich. 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:

• Hire coach and develop a high-performing team of Applied AI Architects creating an environment of technical excellence sound judgment continuous learning accountability and strong customer stewardship.

• Define and continuously refine the strategy and operating model for Applied AI Architecture across Europe aligning company priorities with the evolving needs of strategic customers and the regional go-to-market.

• Partner with Sales leadership and Account Directors to prioritize accounts and opportunities allocate technical resources effectively and establish clear technical strategies for the regions most consequential engagements.

• Ensure Applied AI Architects serve as the primary technical advisors for their portfolios owning technical account plans technical milestones adoption priorities account health and expansion opportunities.

• Lead complex multi-threaded customer journeys that connect executive vision and business outcomes with use-case qualification solution evaluation enterprise governance and a credible path to production.

• Coach the team on Applied AI architectures spanning models applications data integration identity security privacy governance evaluation reliability and deployment.

• Build trusted relationships with C-suite and board-level stakeholders as well as senior AI technology data security and engineering leaders serving as an executive technical sponsor when needed.

• Mobilize Deployment Engineering implementation enablement Product Engineering Research Security Legal Privacy partners and other specialists to remove blockers and deliver a cohesive customer experience.

• Establish a rigorous view of portfolio health including technical wins qualified use cases production readiness adoption usage risks measurable customer impact and the technical contribution to growth.

• Translate patterns from the field into actionable feedback for Product Engineering Research and go-to-market teams while developing reusable architecture guidance and customer practices.

• Foster a culture that balances ambitious customer outcomes with responsible AI deployment clear ownership thoughtful prioritization and effective specialist handoffs.

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Possess deep technical acumen in modern AI systems frontier models agentic applications platform technologies software and cloud architecture APIs data integration identity security privacy evaluation and enterprise deployment.

• Bring 10 years of experience in customer-facing technical roles such as solutions architecture solutions engineering technical account leadership AI deployment or technical consulting including work with large and complex enterprises.

• Have 4 years of people-management experience hiring coaching and developing high-performing customer-facing technical teams.

• Have guided enterprise organizations from technical discovery and evaluation through production adoption healthy usage and measurable business impact.

• Demonstrate outstanding executive communication and presentation skills with the ability to build credibility with CTOs CIOs CISOs boards business leaders and hands-on engineers.

• Can lead a complex portfolio make thoughtful resource-allocation decisions and balance regional strategy with hands-on support for critical customer engagements.

• Exercise strong architectural judgment including knowing when to go deep personally when to coach the team when to involve specialists and how to define clear handoffs and ownership.

• Build strong partnerships across Sales Product Engineering Research Deployment Customer Engagement Security Legal Privacy and external partner ecosystems.

• Are comfortable leading across DACH and partnering across European markets from Munich adapting your approach to different industries cultures regulatory contexts and customer operating models.

• Embody a customer-centric philosophy focused on durable value responsible production adoption technical excellence and long-term partnership.

• Approach your work with humility curiosity a collaborative spirit and a deep commitment to the safe and beneficial advancement of AI.

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 OpenAIs 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. 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 addition job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

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Required Experience:

Manager