A look inside an engineering team @OpenAI with Dylan Vassallo

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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