Applied AI Architect - EDU

About this role

ABOUT THE TEAM

The AI Architect team partners with organizations to turn OpenAI's most capable models into meaningful, real-world impact. We work with customers across industries and digital-native businesses to identify where AI can create value, design secure and scalable solutions, and help those solutions move from early exploration into sustained production adoption. The team brings together technical strategy, customer partnership, and practical deployment expertise, working closely with Sales, Product, Engineering, Research, and specialist delivery teams.

Within Education, we partner with universities, schools, research institutions, and countrywide education systems to advance responsible, mission-aligned uses of AI. These environments require more than technical deployment: success depends on institutional trust, thoughtful governance, stakeholder education, change management, and a value narrative that resonates with academic leaders, researchers, IT teams, faculty, administrators, and students.

ABOUT THE ROLE

As an Applied AI Architect for Education, you will be the senior technical owner for a named portfolio of education customers and the primary technical counterpart to their leadership teams. You will act as the “CTO of your book of business,” shaping each institution’s AI strategy and guiding its journey from pre-sales discovery and solution evaluation through deployment, adoption, and measurable institutional impact.

You will own the technical account plan across ChatGPT Edu, the OpenAI API, Codex, and other agentic AI solutions. In partnership with the Account Director, you will translate institutional priorities into a focused portfolio of use cases, an actionable adoption roadmap, and a clear path to durable value and growth. The Account Director owns the commercial strategy; you own the technical strategy, customer journey, and path to production value.

You will work across academic, research, administrative, and operational contexts—helping customers determine where AI can responsibly improve teaching and learning, accelerate research, strengthen student and faculty services, and make institutional operations more effective. You will account for the realities of education environments, including shared governance, complex stakeholder networks, academic calendars, accessibility, data privacy, responsible-AI expectations, and the need to build confidence among communities with differing levels of AI readiness.

You will remain accountable for the technical outcome while bringing in the right specialists across deployment, implementation, enablement, security, product, education programs, and partners. This role calls for strong education-sector fluency, sound architectural judgment, and the ability to move confidently between executive strategy, academic and operational workflows, and hands-on technical conversations.

IN THIS ROLE, YOU WILL:

- Serve as the primary technical advisor and long-term technical relationship owner for a named portfolio of existing education customers and pre-sales prospects.

- Partner with Account Directors on account strategy while owning the technical account plan, technical milestones, adoption priorities, value-realization path, and expansion opportunities.

- Lead discovery with institutional executives, academic leaders, researchers, faculty, administrators, and technical teams to identify and prioritize use cases connected to meaningful institutional objectives.

- Translate education priorities into clear Applied AI Architectures spanning models, applications, institutional data, identity, integrations, security, privacy, governance, evaluation, and deployment.

- Guide institutions through technical evaluations, demonstrations, workshops, prototypes, and proofs of value, building confidence in both the solution and its responsible path to production.

- Translate institutional objectives into actionable adoption roadmaps with clear workstreams, sequencing, milestones, stakeholder ownership, governance, risks, success measures, and change-management needs.

- Develop a focused use-case portfolio across areas such as teaching and learning, research, student and faculty services, knowledge management, software development, and administrative operations.

- Translate institutional objectives into actionable adoption roadmaps with clear workstreams, sequencing, milestones, stakeholder ownership, governance, risks, success measures, and change-management needs.

- Build trusted relationships and technical champions across CIOs, CTOs, CISOs, provosts, deans, research leaders, faculty, administrators, and other institutional stakeholders.

- Qualify and coordinate support from Deployment Engineering, implementation, training and enablement, Product, Research, education specialists, partners, and other delivery teams.

- Remain accountable for technical progress and customer outcomes while ensuring delivery teams own implementation execution once engaged.

- Track adoption, usage, account health, production readiness, and measurable customer impact, intervening early when risks threaten value realization.

- Identify repeatable education patterns and reusable architectures that can accelerate responsible adoption across institutions, departments, campuses, and education systems.

- Translate field insights into actionable feedback for Product, Engineering, and Research, representing the needs and production patterns of education customers.

- Help identify expansion opportunities where OpenAI can support additional academic, research, administrative, or operational workflows.

YOU MIGHT THRIVE IN THIS ROLE IF YOU:

- Have significant experience in customer-facing technical roles such as solutions architecture, solutions engineering, technical account leadership, AI deployment, or technical customer success.

- Have guided complex organizations from technical evaluation through production adoption an

Similar jobs

• Applied AI Architect — Openai · New York City
• Applied AI Architect — Openai · San Francisco
• Applied AI Solutions Architect — Midstream · San Francisco
• Senior Applied AI Architect — CAI · Remote
• Applied AI Architect, Industries — Anthropic · New York City, NY; San Francisco, CA | New York City, NY | Seattle, WA
• Applied AI Architect, Core Enterprise — Openai · San Francisco
• Enterprise AI Architect — T. Rowe Price · Baltimore, MD | New York, NY
• Applied AI Architect, Enterprise Tech — Anthropic · San Francisco, CA | New York City, NY | Seattle, WA