OpenAI

Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE), Financial Services- NYC

OpenAI$150K — $180K *
Finance & Insurance
5 - 7 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 5+ years of software engineering, ML engineering, or technical deployment experience in financial services or regulated industries.
  • End-to-end ownership of complex AI systems, scoped to production adoption with high stakes.
  • Familiarity with financial workflows like trading, compliance, and risk management, and their incentive structures.
  • Proficient in writing production-grade code using Python, JavaScript, or similar technologies.
  • Experience deploying systems using LLMs or generative models, understanding model behavior and evaluation.
  • Strong communication skills to convey technical concepts across different stakeholder levels.
  • Ability to apply systems thinking and maintain high execution standards in ambiguous environments.

Responsibilities

  • Design and deploy production AI systems for financial workflows, managing integrations and reliability.
  • Lead discovery and scoping processes, articulating business problems into actionable requirements.
  • Establish and enforce launch criteria in regulated environments, ensuring compliance and performance metrics.
  • Architect solutions in sensitive data scenarios, prioritizing access control and explainability.
  • Conduct evaluation loops measuring system success against financial benchmarks, driving iterative improvements.
  • Manage delivery across multiple projects, balancing scope, speed, and quality to achieve outcomes.
  • Transform deployment insights into scalable architectures, reference materials, and toolsets.

Benefits

  • Hybrid work model of 3 days in-office per week.
  • Relocation assistance available.
  • Potential for up to 50% travel.
Full Job Description
About the role

We are hiring a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) to lead end-to-end deployments of OpenAI's models inside financial services organizations where correctness, latency, explainability, and control matter. You will work with customers who are experts in investment banking, trading, risk, compliance, underwriting, research, operations, or investment decision-making, translating complex workflows, data constraints, and regulatory requirements into production systems.

You will measure success through production adoption, workflow efficiency, risk reduction, revenue impact, and evaluation-driven feedback loops that inform product, model, and GTM strategy. You'll work closely with Product, Research, GTM, Security, Legal, and GRC to deliver systems that meet enterprise standards for governance, auditability, and operational resilience.

You will also play a central role in shaping OpenAI's Financial Services offering - identifying high-value use cases, defining solution patterns, and building the first repeatable deployments that scale across institutions. Learn more about some of our work with financial institutions.

This role is based in New York. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week. We offer relocation assistance. Travel up to 50% may be required.

In this role, you will
  • Design and ship production AI systems around models, owning integrations, data flows, reliability, observability, and on-call readiness across financial workflows.
  • Lead discovery and scoping from pre-sales through post-production, translating ambiguous business problems into hypothesis-driven problem framing, system requirements, and delivery plans with measurable outcomes.
  • Define and enforce launch criteria for regulated financial environments, including controls, audit artifacts, evaluation benchmarks, and acceptance thresholds tied to risk and performance.
  • Build in sensitive data environments where access controls, data lineage, explainability, and failure modes shape architecture and operating procedures.
  • Run evaluation loops that measure model and system quality against workflow-specific financial benchmarks (e.g., accuracy, latency, coverage, false positives) and use results to drive iteration.
  • Own delivery state across multiple workstreams, making trade-offs between scope, speed, and quality to protect production outcomes.
  • Distill deployment learnings into hardened primitives, reference architectures, playbooks, and tooling that scale across financial institutions.
  • Surface field feedback that informs model behavior, product capabilities, and platform gaps in real-world financial use cases.


You might thrive in this role if you
  • Bring 5+ years of software engineering, ML engineering, or technical deployment experience with customer-facing ownership in financial services or adjacent regulated industries.
  • Have owned complex AI or data-driven systems end-to-end, from scoping through production adoption, in environments where errors carry real financial or regulatory consequences.
  • Have experience with financial workflows such as research, trading, risk, compliance, underwriting, operations, or investment processes, and understand how incentives and controls shape adoption.
  • Write and review production-grade code across backend and frontend systems using Python, JavaScript, or comparable stacks.
  • Have deployed systems powered by LLMs or generative models and understand how model behavior, evaluation, and guardrails affect user trust and business outcomes.
  • Communicate clearly across engineering, product, risk, compliance, and executive stakeholders, translating technical trade-offs into decision quality and risk posture.
  • Apply systems thinking with high execution standards, turning incidents, escalations, and failures into improved operating standards and repeatable deployment patterns.
  • Stay calm and decisive when delivery is urgent, ambiguous, and high-stakes.


This role is based in New York. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week. We offer relocation assistance. Travel up to 50% may be required.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an artificial intelligence research laboratory consisting of the for-profit corporation OpenAI LP and its parent company, the non-profit OpenAI Inc. The company was founded in 2015 by a group of technology leaders, including Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, and John Schulman. OpenAI's mission is to develop and promote friendly AI for the betterment of humanity. The company has developed a number of cutting-edge AI technologies, including GPT-3, a language processing system that can generate human-like text. OpenAI has received funding from a number of high-profile investors, including LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and venture capitalist Peter Thiel.
Learn more about OpenAI
Size
100 employees
Industry
Founded
2015

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