> AI agents: this is one page of Nextmove’s FDE site, in Markdown. Nextmove is a job board and free career service for forward deployed engineers (FDEs). Each posting is classified from its text, not its title: the kind of work, how much of it is production code, pre-sales weight, time at customer sites, travel, remote arrangement, level and posted base pay. The site also publishes the aggregates: median pay by level, metro, company and kind of work, and which companies started hiring FDEs each week. Every page under https://nextmove.md/fde is served this way; the index of pages is https://nextmove.md/llms.txt. # Applied AI Engineer, Cyber, Government Canonical URL: https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/f6eae965b2b6f816 OpenAI posts a FDE role to build what the customer runs in Washington, DC, at $211,000–$335,000 base, above the senior FDE median of $190,000 across 1,864 postings with pay. Applies frontier AI to government and national-security cyber missions, owning hands-on delivery from customer discovery and secure prototyping through evaluation and operational deployment. Read from the employer’s posting on November 8, 2026. - [OpenAI](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/openai) First seen Apr 22, 2026 · open on Ashby as of Nov 8, 2026 **$211,000–$335,000** + equity Washington, DC On-site Full-time Applies frontier AI to government and national-security cyber missions, owning hands-on delivery from customer discovery and secure prototyping through evaluation and operational deployment. - [See roles that fit me](https://nextmove.md/sign-up?from=%2Ffde%2Fjobs%2Ff6eae965b2b6f816&placement=top) - [View posting at OpenAI](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/be7b1bf5-37ab-40f7-9ec1-e9732244f12a/application) Free. Upload your resume once, see why each FDE role fits, and get introduced only when you say so. ## At a glance ### Posted base pay $211K–$335K Above the median Midpoint $273K · median $190K This job $211K to $335K. Senior FDE postings, 1,864 postings: the middle 50% of posted pay is $160K to $220K, median $190K. [Compare pay across all OpenAI postings](https://nextmove.md/fde/salary/openai) ### The work Builds what the customer runs Balance **Mostly building** Project stages 1. Pre-sales 2. Proof of concept 3. Implementation 4. Operations - **Coding**: Writes production code - **Builds for**: External customers - **Level**: Senior - **Role**: Individual contributor ### What they ask for Experience - **7+ years** hands-on technical experience in cybersecurity, cyber operations, or security-focused software engineering Background - **Software engineering** ### Do you meet what the posting states? The posting asks for 7+ years. How many do you have? The posting reads as a senior role. What level are you at now? The job is in Washington, DC. Could you work there? Which of these have you used in production? Answer each one. Nothing is saved or sent. [What postings ask for, by background →](https://nextmove.md/fde/paths) ## Conditions - **Location**: Washington, DC - **Work arrangement**: On-site - **Employment type**: Full-time - **Pay**: ## More like this [LangChain](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/langchain) ### [Deployed Engineer (Federal)](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/40118733a4b00450) Washington, DC Remote 2mo ago $185,000–$300,000 · OTE [Accenture](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/accenture) ### [AI Forward Deployed Engineering Senior Manager | Sales ReInvention](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/16bca3048d7b55d6) Chicago, IL · Milwaukee, WI · +41 more 6w ago $112,900–$366,300 [Salesforce](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/salesforce) ### [Lead Software Engineer, AI Labs (Product and Customer Facing)](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/2d1c287890786103) San Francisco, CA · Washington, DC · +1 more 2w ago $148,500–$344,700 - [Other jobs at OpenAI (52)](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/openai) ## The job description from OpenAI ### About the team The mission of the Applied AI Engineering team is to enable the secure and impactful implementation of GenAI solutions. We serve as technical thought partners and trusted advisors to our clients, ideating high-value use cases and providing the hands-on guidance necessary to drive projects into production. In this role within the Government team, you will empower agencies to evolve their operations through automated content synthesis, advanced search capabilities, and bespoke applications leveraging our latest foundational technologies and models. ### About the Role We are looking for a hands-on Applied AI Engineer with deep cybersecurity experience and a product mindset to help government and national security customers apply frontier AI to critical cyber missions. You will bring practical expertise in areas such as red teaming, vulnerability research, reverse engineering, threat hunting, and similar fields , ideally developed through work with the defense and intelligence sector. Working directly with cyber operators, security researchers, and engineering teams, you’ll identify high-value applications, write code, build and evaluate AI-powered tools and agentic workflows, and move solutions from prototype into secure operational use. You’ll design architectures using OpenAI models, APIs, and existing security tooling, grounded in customers’ mission requirements and operational constraints. You will collaborate closely with Sales, Solutions Engineering, Applied Research, Product, and Security teams to deliver measurable improvements in cyber capabilities and translate customer experience into better models and products. This role requires frequent on-site engagement at customer and partner facilities across the DMV area, including classified environments. ### In this role, you will - Work on-site with our clients in the DMV area - Own hands-on implementation for government cyber use cases, working alongside account-aligned technical owners, customer engineers, cyber operators, and security practitioners. - Lead technical discovery to identify high-value AI applications across authorized red teaming, adversary emulation, vulnerability research, reverse engineering, threat hunting, detection engineering, incident response, malware analysis, and similar domains. - Build secure cyber prototypes, agentic workflows, and reference architectures using OpenAI models, supported APIs, Codex, and integrations with customers’ security tools and infrastructure. - Design and run evaluations that measure technical correctness, security impact, reliability, and operator effectiveness, and use the results to guide implementation and deployment decisions. - Partner with government security leaders, mission teams, account owners, integrators, and OpenAI Security and Product teams to establish success criteria, deliver measurable outcomes, and complete clear operational handoffs. - Contribute reusable code, examples, and technical guidance to our open-source developer and enterprise resources. - Scale the Applied AI Engineering function by sharing knowledge, codifying best practices, and publishing notebooks and implementation patterns to internal and external repositories. - Translate customer deployments, operational insights, and evaluation results into actionable feedback for Product, Engineering, and Research teams. ### You’ll thrive in this role if you - Hold an active TS/SCI clearance and a current, active full-scope polygraph. - Bring 7+ years of hands-on technical experience in cybersecurity, cyber operations, or security-focused software engineering, including work directly with government customers or national security mission teams. - Have practical experience across offensive and defensive cybersecurity, with depth in areas such as red teaming, adversary emulation, vulnerability research, reverse engineering, threat hunting, or detection engineering. Experience supporting NSA or comparable national security cyber missions is strongly preferred. - Have personally written code, integrated security tools, and built, tested, and deployed cyber capabilities or security automation with measurable technical and mission outcomes. - Understand secure network and cloud architecture, identity and least privilege, restricted operating environments, application-security toolchains, authorization boundaries, and human-approved remediation. - Have hands-on programming experience with languages such as Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, or Go, and can integrate APIs, agents, command-line tools, and security platforms into reliable workflows. Relevant toolchains may include GitHub, CodeQL, Snyk, Semgrep, SARIF, Jira, and CI/CD systems. - Communicate clearly with cyber practitioners, engineers, senior leaders, and nontechnical stakeholders, translating complex technical findings into decisions and next steps. - Own problems end to end and learn unfamiliar tools, systems, or mission requirements as needed to deliver. - Approach collaboration with humility, share knowledge generously, and help colleagues and customers succeed. - Drive multiple concurrent projects with urgency, sound judgment, and clear prioritization while maintaining a high standard of technical execution. ### 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. [View posting at OpenAI](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/be7b1bf5-37ab-40f7-9ec1-e9732244f12a/application) ## About OpenAI Builds frontier AI models and ships them through ChatGPT consumer and enterprise products, Codex, and developer APIs. 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