Physical Engineering Business Lead; Special Situations

OpenAI’s Physical Engineering work explores how frontier AI can help people design, simulate, and build better physical products. We work directly with customers to identify high-value engineering applications that shorten development cycles, improve product performance, and create measurable business value.

We are hiring a Physical Engineering Business Lead to bring firsthand product engineering experience into our customer work. You’ll combine deep familiarity with CAD, simulation, or related engineering tools with the ability to lead customer discovery, explain complex ideas clearly, and turn promising use cases into high-impact projects.

This is a hands‑on, customer‑facing role. You’ll work closely with customer engineering teams, senior leaders, forward‑deployed engineers (FDEs), and account teams from early discovery through delivery. You’ll help frame valuable design and simulation problems, guide projects with practical engineering judgment, and support adoption and measurable outcomes.

You’ll also turn what we learn from customers into product feedback, reusable delivery methods, and recommendations for our go‑to‑market and partnership strategies. As the work grows, this role may evolve into broader practice leadership.

• Lead discovery and workshops with customer engineering teams and senior leaders to identify high-value design and simulation use cases

• Develop promising use cases into significant projects with FDE and account teams, forming clear hypotheses about value, feasibility, engineering constraints, and adoption

• Work alongside FDEs and customer teams through delivery, bringing practical engineering context, surfacing risks early, and helping projects achieve measurable outcomes

• Explain how AI can improve physical-product engineering, grounded in real experience with CAD, simulation, engineering workflows, and design tradeoffs

• Build customer confidence through clear technical storytelling, compelling use cases, and credible engineering judgment

• Maintain a clear operating cadence across priority projects, with explicit owners, risks, decisions, and success measures

• Turn customer insights into reusable discovery methods, FDE guidance, product feedback, and recommendations for our product, go‑to‑market, and partnership strategies

• Build relationships across physical‑product engineering teams and the broader design and simulation ecosystem

• Move fluidly between executive conversations, technical working sessions, analysis, writing, and delivery follow‑through

• Firsthand experience designing or building physical products, including substantial hands‑on work with CAD, simulation, or related engineering tools

• Deep understanding of engineering workflows and tradeoffs, with clear examples of your personal contributions and their impact on products or projects

• Strong discovery and problem‑framing skills, including the ability to connect engineering details to customer needs and business value

• The ability to work directly with FDEs and customer technical teams, contribute practical engineering judgment, and stay engaged through implementation

• Strong customer presence and the ability to explain complex technical ideas clearly to senior leaders

• Technical curiosity and the ability to learn quickly in a fast‑moving environment; prior AI experience is not required

• High agency, low ego, sound judgment, and a willingness to do the detailed work needed to move outcomes forward

• Clear communication and reliable follow‑through across technical, commercial, and executive teams

• A background in mechanical engineering or a closely related discipline

• Consulting, founder, partnership, or other customer‑facing experience that…