OpenAI starts hiring engineers in India to deepen enterprise focus
OpenAI is recruiting solutions engineers in India to enhance its product offerings. The company is focusing on building a foundational team in Bengaluru, reflecting its commitment to the region as a key market, while also planning a significant investment in local AI infrastructure.
New Delhi/Bengaluru: OpenAI, the world’s most valuable artificial intelligence (AI) startup and maker of ChatGPT, has begun hiring engineers in India as it looks to deepen its presence—especially in the enterprise segment—in what has become its largest market outside the US by user base.
Speaking at a media roundtable in Bengaluru on Tuesday, Srinivas Narayanan, chief technology officer for business applications of the San Francisco-based company and Pragya Misra, head of strategy and global affairs for India, said the company has started hiring solutions engineers in its India team.
While they did not call out any hiring figures, they said the plan is to keep a “lean team" in the first year of setting up an office in the country.
“We have go-to-market roles that are open, have been open now for the last month or so when we announced our India office in August," Misra said. “Since then, we've opened up a bunch of go-to-market roles, and also solution engineers and architects who can then support those go-to-market folks."
She added that the company will focus on building a foundational team in the first six months to a year. “And then we’ll, of course, keep building more and more," Misra added.
A solutions architect or engineer is a key layer between a technology firm’s core engineering division, and its sales team. Traditionally, solutions architects consult with sales divisions to understand the demand from enterprises, and custom-design software features with the core engineering team in line with business requirements.
Over the years, technology companies such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Google have tweaked their core tech offerings such as Windows 11 and Google Cloud applications to match what enterprises needed.
A quick look at OpenAI’s careers page shows the company is currently ramping up its India presence with the hiring of senior sales executives to head relations with startups and large enterprises.
The company is also looking to hire people for eight roles including an AI deployment manager, solutions architect, and a “Head of Asia-Pacific, Global Affairs". As the company looks to increase its presence in India and cash in on ChatGPT’s popularity, solutions architects could be key.
OpenAI is eyeing Bengaluru to increase its presence. “We also want to deepen the relationship with developers and Bangalore," Narayanan said. The company is already managing startup relations in the city, with Misra adding that building startup relations “really is a big part of what we want to do". One of OpenAI’s five sales roles listed in India currently is for a startups account director.
The right move
Analysts are not surprised at OpenAI’s move. “So far, the push to sell a diverse range of industry-specific AI models has not really led to fruition," said Sudarshan Seshadri, partner at Tiger Analytics, adding that India will likely see various tech companies offer sector-specific models such as an LLM for financial applications, all of which will require solutions architects.
Earlier this year, Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, said on the sidelines of the launch of GPT-5, its latest model that India is the company’s largest market outside the US—and could even become the biggest soon.
India, with over 1 billion users on the internet, is one of the world’s most populous. This has caused OpenAI, which has 800 million weekly active users worldwide, to double down on the market, where Google already enjoys a stronghold thanks to Search and Android.
Kashyap Kompella, veteran technology analyst and founder of RPA2AI Research, noted that OpenAI's agentic AI play with ChatGPT has not really ramped up with businesses.
“Now, as Google looks to catch up and others such as Anthropic join the party, OpenAI will require such engineers to be able to fine tune their offerings in the India market," he said. “The demand won't be in thousands, but there will certainly be steady demand."
OpenAI’s plans to expand India headcount follow announcements to make some of its AI platforms free for a year.
The company had launched an India-exclusive ChatGPT Go plan at ₹399 in August, which offered features like higher message limits, image generation, and file uploading capabilities. A week ago, the company announced that this plan would be free for 12 months for users who register for it during a limited-time promotional period.
The AI company is also planning to set-up a 1GW data centre in the country and is in talks with local partners for the same. This would be a shot in the arm for the country’s plans to ramp up AI infrastructure under OpenAI’s Stargate brand.
Stargate is a $500-billion global AI infrastructure initiative backed by OpenAI, Oracle, SoftBank and MGX.
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