Field CTO

OpenAI•San Francisco, CA

2d•$302,000 - $352,000

About The Position

As a Field CTO (Strategic Pursuits), you will serve as a strategic bridge between our customers, go-to-market (GTM) teams, and product organization. You will partner closely with Sales, Technical Success, and Product to shape high-impact deals, guide customer architecture decisions, and influence our product roadmap based on real-world adoption and feedback. This is a highly cross-functional, externally facing leadership role for someone who combines deep technical expertise with strong business acumen and customer empathy.

Requirements

15+ years of experience in technical leadership roles.
Strong background in enterprise architecture, cloud platforms, and modern software systems.
Experience supporting enterprise sales cycles or working closely with GTM teams.
Ability to translate complex technical concepts into clear business value for non-technical stakeholders.
Strong problem-solving skills with a bias for action and ownership.
Excellent communication and executive presence.
Proven ability to influence without authority across cross-functional teams.

Nice To Haves

Exposure to AI/ML systems, especially LLMs and applied AI use cases, is highly preferred.

Responsibilities

Partner with Sales, Product and Technical Success teams to support complex, high-value deals as a technical and strategic advisor.
Translate customer business needs into scalable technical solutions and architectures.
Engage with senior customer stakeholders (CTO/CIO/VP-level) to drive alignment on vision, roadmap, and adoption.
Lead technical strategy discussions during key deal stages, including discovery, solution design, and executive presentations.
Guide customers on best practices for deploying and scaling AI-driven solutions in production.
Provide architectural oversight across use cases such as LLM applications, integrations, data pipelines, and security.
Act as a trusted advisor to ensure long-term success, not just short-term wins.
Bring structured customer insights back to Product and Engineering teams to inform roadmap and prioritization.
Identify gaps, opportunities, and emerging patterns from customer deployments.
Influence product direction based on real-world usage, scalability needs, and enterprise requirements.
Help shape GTM strategies by identifying repeatable patterns across industries and customer segments.
Develop scalable frameworks, reference architectures, and playbooks for broader field teams.
Represent the company externally through customer engagements, industry events, and thought leadership.