Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE), Legal-NYC
About The Position
OpenAI’s Forward Deployed Engineering team partners with customers to turn research breakthroughs into production systems. We embed deeply with users to solve high-leverage problems. We move quickly from prototype to deployment and surface patterns that shape the platform. We operate at the intersection of customer delivery and core development. We work closely with Product, Research, and Go-To-Market (GTM). We are hiring a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) to build and deploy AI systems for legal work. You will embed deeply with customers—often working closely with senior legal practitioners—to identify the right first use case, rapidly prototype a solution, and prove measurable value. Early engagements may focus on creating a “hero” workflow that shows how OpenAI’s models can support legal analysis, drafting, research, or real-time work with complex case records. You will own the technical work from discovery and proof of concept through production adoption, while translating customer workflows and constraints into clear product feedback. As the motion matures, you will turn successful deployments into repeatable patterns that can scale across larger accounts and the broader legal market.
Requirements
- 5+ years of software engineering, ML engineering, or technical deployment experience with customer-facing ownership in financial services or adjacent regulated industries.
- 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.
- Write and review production-grade code across backend and frontend systems using Python, JavaScript, or comparable stacks.
- 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.
Nice To Haves
- Experience with legal technology, legal services, compliance-heavy workflows, or professional services; this is helpful but not required.
Responsibilities
- Embed with law firms and legal teams to understand their workflows, identify high-value opportunities, and select the right initial use cases to prove value.
- Build full-stack systems that deliver customer value and sharpen how we learn
- Embed closely with customer teams, understand their needs, and guide adoption of what you build
- Make trade-offs between scope, speed, and quality; adjust plans to protect delivery
- Contribute directly in the code when progress or clarity depends on it
- Codify working patterns into tools, playbooks, or building blocks that others can use
- Share field feedback that helps Research and Product understand where the models succeed and where they can improve
Benefits
- Relocation assistance
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
Education Level
No Education Listed
