About this episode

Sulman Choudhry discusses how OpenAI's engineering organization is evolving team structures and workflows.

In this episode, recorded live at the OpenAI studio, Sulman Choudhry (Head of ChatGPT @ OpenAI) pulls back the curtain on how they structure engineering teams! We talk about shifting from silos to fluid mission-driven teams, vertical vs. horizontal teams, maximizing cross-functional collaboration between research, engineering, product and design. Plus we cover “directly responsible individuals” for high accountability, managers as systems designers, scaling decision-making to prevent leadership from becoming bottlenecks, frameworks for mentoring junior engineers, why “problem framing” is the most critical skill, and how managers can stay close to problems and maintain technical intuition.

People in this episode

Guest: Sulman Choudhry

Topics covered

• engineering teams
• cross-functional collaboration
• accountability
• mentoring
• decision-making
• problem framing

Keywords

• OpenAI
• engineering
• teams
• collaboration
• accountability
• mentoring
• decision-making
• problem framing

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: OpenAI

Products: ChatGPT

More episodes of The Engineering Leadership Podcast

• How Enterprises Actually Win with AI: Operationalizing Responsible AI, Engineering Guardrails, Trust Controls, and Systems Thinking at Scale w/ Murali Swaminathan #255 · April 21, 2026 · 45 min
• Shifting Eng Leaders to Think Like GMs, Building an AI-Driven Visionary Roadmap & Braze’s Product Health Initiative w/ Jon Hyman #254 · April 7, 2026 · 49 min
• Leading effectively across company archetypes: product, business and design-led leadership w/ Sebastiano Armeli #253 · March 31, 2026 · 40 min
• Changes in engineering management craft, career growth and all hands demos for inspiration and context w/ Lindsey Simon #252 · March 24, 2026 · 45 min
• Career growth for engineering leaders in the AI era: Building your thesis, the “running framework” & developing technical depth w/ Chris Chiu #251 · March 19, 2026 · 44 min
• The innovation engine behind Samsara driving real-world impact: compounding feedback loops, data flywheels and embedding engineers in customer problems w/ Kiren Sekar #249 · February 17, 2026 · 44 min

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the The Engineering Leadership Podcast podcast page.