
A look inside an engineering team @OpenAI with Dylan Vassallo
From StaffEng by David Noël-Romas (@davidnoelromas) and Alex Kessinger (@voidfiles)
April 10, 2026 · 45 min · Season 2 · Episode 3
About this episode
Dylan Vassallo discusses the dynamics of an engineering team at OpenAI and the integration of AI in various organizational functions.
Dylan Vassallo is an engineering manager at OpenAI leading the People Innovation Labs team — an eng, product, and design team embedded within the People org, building AI-powered tools for recruiting, HR, internal comms, and the employee experience. In this episode, Dylan talks about what it actually looks like to be an engineering team inside a frontier AI company, how non-engineers are becoming builders, and what the "graduation" process looks like when a prototype needs to become a product...
People in this episode
Hosts: David Noël-Romas, Alex Kessinger
Guest: Dylan Vassallo
Topics covered
- engineering team
- AI tools
- recruiting
- HR
- employee experience
- product development
Keywords
- engineering manager
- AI-powered tools
- People org
- internal communications
- prototype to product
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: OpenAI, People Innovation Labs
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