Strategic Overview
Engineering Manager, Multimodal (API) at OpenAI is a leadership opportunity centered on the specialist responsibilities and outcomes described in the employer's listing.
The published role emphasizes work such as Build, mentor, and grow a high-performing engineering team focused on multimodal API products—including image generation and Live API. Collaborate closely with product managers, designers, and other stakeholders to define the strategic vision and product…
The role is listed for San Francisco with the working arrangement published with the role, giving candidates the practical context needed to assess fit before applying. Relevant signals in the listing include Core Product & Platform, Core Product & Platform | API.
Key information at a glance
About This Role
About the Team: OpenAI's mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits all of humanity. Our API is the industry's most widely adopted AI platform, empowering startups, indie developers, and Fortune 500 companies alike. Through multimodal APIs, we enable users to harness the full potential of diverse AI modalities effectively and at scale.
About the Role:
We are seeking an Engineering Manager to lead our multimodal API product suite. Your team will be responsible for delivering innovative APIs across real-time multimodal interactions and image generation. You will own the product roadmap for how we evolve our multimodal API offerings, and you will build the products that allow developers to reach millions of end users through AI audio, video, and images.
Key Responsibilities & Objectives
- Build, mentor, and grow a high-performing engineering team focused on multimodal API products—including image generation and Live API.
- Collaborate closely with product managers, designers, and other stakeholders to define the strategic vision and product roadmap.
- Work closely with our research teams to improve our core multimodal models for API customer use cases.
- Proven experience managing engineering teams that deliver complex, high-quality products at scale.
Required Qualifications & Candidate Blueprint
- Familiarity with or strong interest in multimodal AI, including speech technologies, real-time systems, and image generation.
- Ability to operate effectively in a fast-paced, ambiguous startup environment.
- Familiarity with real-time streaming technologies, audio processing, and computer vision.
Salary & Benefits
Published compensation: $401K – $445K
- Collaborate closely with product managers, designers, and other stakeholders to define the strategic vision and product roadmap.
- Familiarity with real-time streaming technologies, audio processing, and computer vision.
Salary Benchmark
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Full Job Description
The following is the complete job description supplied by the source. We sanitize unsafe markup and remove external links, but do not shorten or rewrite the employer's source content.
About the Team:
OpenAI's mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits all of humanity. Our API is the industry's most widely adopted AI platform, empowering startups, indie developers, and Fortune 500 companies alike. Through multimodal APIs, we enable users to harness the full potential of diverse AI modalities effectively and at scale.
About the Role:
We are seeking an Engineering Manager to lead our multimodal API product suite. Your team will be responsible for delivering innovative APIs across real-time multimodal interactions and image generation. You will own the product roadmap for how we evolve our multimodal API offerings, and you will build the products that allow developers to reach millions of end users through AI audio, video, and images.
In this role, you will:
Build, mentor, and grow a high-performing engineering team focused on multimodal API products—including image generation and Live API.
Collaborate closely with product managers, designers, and other stakeholders to define the strategic vision and product roadmap.
Work closely with our research teams to improve our core multimodal models for API customer use cases.
Guide technical and architectural decisions, emphasizing scalability, robustness, and user experience.
Foster a culture of innovation, continuous improvement, and accountability within your team.
Qualifications:
Proven experience managing engineering teams that deliver complex, high-quality products at scale.
Strong technical background and proficiency in modern software engineering practices and system architecture.
Excellent collaboration and communication skills to effectively coordinate across diverse teams and stakeholders.
Familiarity with or strong interest in multimodal AI, including speech technologies, real-time systems, and image generation.
Ability to operate effectively in a fast-paced, ambiguous startup environment.
Preferred Qualifications:
Experience developing multimodal systems or APIs in AI/ML domains, especially around image generation, audio generation, or speech transcription.
Familiarity with real-time streaming technologies, audio processing, and computer vision.
Hands-on experience with cloud platforms and distributed architectures.
Location:
This role is in-person at our San Francisco office.
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 OpenAI’s 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 information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.
To notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant, please submit a report through this form. No response will be provided to inquiries unrelated to job posting compliance.
We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link.
OpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy
At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.
Editor’s Market Perspective (Our Custom Analysis)
Why This Position Matters
This leadership opening is a useful opportunity for candidates whose experience matches Core Product & Platform, Core Product & Platform | API. Its strongest career signal is the scope of the work itself — particularly Build, mentor, and grow a high-performing engineering team focused on multimodal API products—including image generation and Live API. — rather than a generic title alone.
Resume & Application Strategy
For the application, mirror the employer's language where it truthfully matches your background: foreground Core Product & Platform, Core Product & Platform | API, quantify outcomes from comparable work, and place the most relevant experience near the top of the resume. If the listing specifies tools, platforms, leadership scope, or domain experience, use those exact terms in context instead of presenting an unrelated keyword list.
We organize source-provided information into this independent job-seeker overview. Compensation is shown only when the source provides it; the official listing remains the authority for current requirements and application instructions.