About the talk:

Applied AI Engineering turns powerful models into reliable, useful systems for people and organizations. Hosted by Bonnie Chatterjee, Global Head of Applied AI Engineering at OpenAI, this candid conversation will bring together members of the team to share how they combine technical expertise, customer context, real-world testing, and human judgment to deliver dependable outcomes. The panel will explore the problems Applied AI Engineers solve, how the team collaborates, what candidates should know about working at the frontier, and the candidate journey at a high level. An audience Q&A will follow.

About the speakers:

Bonnie Chatterjee leads Applied AI Engineering at OpenAI, where she works with customers to bring AI into their businesses and make a real difference for their teams. Her team focuses on helping customers build rich experiences with the OpenAI API. Before OpenAI, she led customer-facing engineering teams at Snowflake, Stripe, and GitHub, helping customers put new technology to work. She cares deeply about her customers, her team, and doing work that matters.

Erika Kettleson is an Applied AI Engineer on OpenAI’s Startups team, where she works with founders and engineering teams to bring AI applications into production. Before OpenAI, she was on the Solutions team at Twilio, helping developers design and scale voice and communications systems.

Thomas Li is an Applied AI Engineer at OpenAI, supporting the Retail vertical, where he helps large retailers build and deploy agentic solutions across customer experience, store operations, and other core retail domains. Before OpenAI, he led engineering teams at McKinsey & Company, building bespoke software solutions for clients across various industries, including healthcare, energy, and materials.