Account Director, Federal Partnerships

OpenAI•Washington, DC

10d•Hybrid

About The Position

OpenAI’s mission is to build safe artificial general intelligence (AGI) which benefits all of humanity. This long-term undertaking brings the world’s best scientists, engineers, and business professionals into one lab together to accomplish this. In pursuit of this mission, our Go To Market (GTM) team is responsible for helping customers learn how to leverage and deploy our highly capable AI products across their organization. The team comprises Sales, Solutions, Support, Marketing, and Partnership professionals who collaborate to create valuable solutions that will help bring AI to as many users as possible. Our Federal Sales team has a unique mission to help government customers understand the transformative impact that highly capable AI models can bring to their agencies and missions. This role combines technical understanding, strategic vision, partnership management, and value-driven strategy tailored specifically to federal customers. You’ll drive key opportunities through the entire federal sales cycle, from pipeline generation to closure. You’ll collaborate closely with researchers, engineers, and solution strategists to help government customers advance their missions through AI. This role is based in Washington DC. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.

Requirements

10+ years selling platform-as-a-service and/or software-as-a-service specifically into federal government accounts
Achieving federal revenue targets of >$2M per year consistently over multiple years
Designing and executing complex federal deal strategies, including familiarity with government contracting and procurement processes
Supporting growth in fast-paced, high-performance federal environments
Working directly with senior government executives and federal agency leaders
Communicating technical and strategic concepts clearly to government customers and internal stakeholders
Leading high-visibility federal customer events, briefings, and industry engagements
Gathering, distilling, and processing detailed federal market intelligence (agency priorities, policy changes, competitor activities, etc.)

Nice To Haves

Are a strategist. You deeply understand go to market best practices and raise the bar for our organization. You think and plan forward on the order of years and bring internal and external stakeholders along with your strategy.
Are customer-centric. You are motivated to deeply understand federal customers’ priorities and help them achieve their mission-critical objectives using AI. You build trusted relationships with government executives and stakeholders across agencies.
Have a passion or deep curiosity about artificial intelligence. You embrace the opportunity to help deploy OpenAI’s technology in a way that benefits federal missions and humanity. You’re enthusiastic about educating government customers on AI capabilities and strategic implications.
Are a builder. You enjoy impacting how our company grows its federal business. You excel in establishing robust systems and processes tailored to federal requirements, executing them with precision and agility.
Are excited by new challenges. You thrive when solving complex federal-specific problems. Bespoke challenges requiring multidimensional federal knowledge excite you, and you’re eager to experiment with innovative solutions within government environments.
Push the organization. You deeply understand federal go-to-market best practices and proactively contribute to strategic initiatives. You plan years ahead, effectively aligning internal and external federal stakeholders to achieve long-term objectives.

Responsibilities

Manage a focused set of key federal accounts, developing and executing comprehensive federal account plans
Lead federal customers through their AI adoption journey, from consideration to successful deployment
Partner with solutions and research engineering to build and execute complex government customer programs and projects
Own and manage a federal consumption revenue target
Oversee consumption revenue forecasting and reporting
Analyze key federal account metrics and provide insights to internal and external stakeholders
Closely monitor the federal landscape (agencies, policies, competitors, partners, etc.) to inform product roadmaps and corporate strategies
Collaborate cross-functionally with solutions, marketing, communications, business operations, people operations, finance, product management, and engineering
Support the recruitment and onboarding of federal-focused team members
Foster the development of our company culture within the federal practice