Strategic Delivery Lead, Intelligence Community

OpenAI•Washington, DC

4d•$266,000 - $370,000•Onsite

About The Position

The Strategic Delivery Lead (SDL) for the Intelligence Community will identify, shape, and deliver OpenAI’s highest-impact deployments for U.S. intelligence organizations. You will help IC customers translate mission priorities—including all-source analysis, intelligence production, collection management, open-source and geospatial exploitation, cyber threat analysis, knowledge discovery, and analyst productivity—into secure, technically feasible AI deployments built on the OpenAI API and enterprise products. The role is highly cross-functional and customer-facing: you will partner with Research, Engineering, Go-to-Market, Security, Legal, Privacy, and government mission, acquisition, and technical stakeholders to align on scope, remove delivery obstacles, and communicate progress from working teams to agency leadership. You will own end-to-end execution of technical delivery workstreams led by Forward Deployed Engineers, Researchers, Solutions Architects, and Enablement teams. You will establish mission outcomes, requirements, integrated roadmaps, milestones, dependencies, and acceptance criteria; coordinate secure architecture, data integration, evaluation, authorization, and production rollout; proactively surface risks; and ensure every engagement demonstrates measurable customer value. Accountability for contractual milestones, delivery governance, and acceptance criteria sits with you. This is a high-trust, high-autonomy role. Success requires technical fluency, deep program-management expertise, executive presence, sound judgment in classified environments, and a commitment to translating novel AI capabilities into trusted, real-world intelligence mission outcomes.

Requirements

10+ years of experience leading technical programs, enterprise AI or cloud deployments, intelligence mission transformation, or national security consulting, including substantial direct delivery experience with U.S. Intelligence Community customers.
Hold an active U.S. Government TS/SCI clearance; an existing full-scope polygraph and the ability to meet customer-specific access requirements are strongly preferred.
Willing to travel up to 50% and work on-site with IC customers in secure facilities to build trusted relationships and understand mission, user, and operating-environment needs.
Understand Intelligence Community missions, organizations, operating models, and analytic tradecraft, including experience supporting agencies or elements such as ODNI, CIA, NSA, DIA, NGA, or NRO; existing IC customer relationships are beneficial but not required.
Have led complex generative AI, AI/ML, enterprise SaaS, API, data-platform, cloud, or digital-transformation programs from discovery through operational deployment in mission-sensitive environments.
Bring executive presence and a record of advising agency leadership, mission owners, contracting officers, and senior technical stakeholders; can influence decisions, resolve ambiguity, and build alignment across government and industry teams.
Translate mission outcomes into requirements, statements of work, integrated schedules, acceptance criteria, evaluation plans, and measurable success metrics such as analyst time saved, workflow adoption, quality, and decision advantage.
Have experience delivering systems across multiple classification levels and navigating secure cloud and restricted environments; familiarity with IC enterprise IT, identity and access controls, data governance, cross-domain constraints, RMF/ATO processes, and ICD 503 is valued.
Understand modern AI solution architectures, including large language models, enterprise APIs, retrieval-augmented generation, agentic workflows, data integration, model evaluation, and the security, reliability, and adoption considerations involved in operational deployment.
Apply responsible-AI practices appropriate to intelligence missions, including human-in-the-loop review, analytic objectivity, source and data provenance, privacy and civil liberties safeguards, explainability, adversarial testing, and ongoing model monitoring.
Build durable partnerships across analysts, operators, researchers, engineers, security and privacy specialists, contracting teams, mission executives, and industry partners; thrive in ambiguous, fast-moving environments and create clarity, accountability, and momentum.
See yourself as a bridge between frontier AI research and intelligence mission impact, with the technical fluency to connect emerging AI and AGI capabilities to realistic customer requirements and operational constraints.
Care deeply about national security outcomes and helping Intelligence Community customers use AI safely, responsibly, and effectively while protecting sensitive information and public trust.

Nice To Haves

Existing IC customer relationships are beneficial but not required.
An existing full-scope polygraph and the ability to meet customer-specific access requirements are strongly preferred.

Responsibilities

Build trusted relationships with IC mission owners, analysts, collectors, operators, Chief Information Officers, Chief Data Officers, Chief Information Security Officers, and acquisition leaders to identify and prioritize high-value, mission-ready AI use cases.
Own delivery of complex IC engagements from discovery and technical shaping through pilot, security authorization, production deployment, customer acceptance, and sustained adoption; maintain accountability for contractual milestones, integrated schedules, scope, and mission outcomes.
Translate intelligence mission requirements, analytic tradecraft, data constraints, and security policies into clear technical requirements, architectural decisions, delivery plans, and executive-level communications; lead technical exchanges, design reviews, and customer briefings.
Partner with IC elements, mission integrators, cloud and infrastructure providers, industry partners, and academia to develop AI applications for intelligence analysis, collection and exploitation workflows, cyber defense, multilingual research, knowledge retrieval, and other priority missions.
Lead cross-functional teams spanning Forward Deployed Engineering, Solutions Architecture, Research, Product, Security, Legal, Privacy, and customer mission teams to design, evaluate, and deliver generative AI, retrieval-augmented generation, and agentic workflow solutions.
Establish delivery operating rhythms, program roadmaps, milestone and dependency tracking, risk and decision governance, customer reporting, and measurable indicators of mission impact, user adoption, model quality, and operational readiness.
Coordinate deployment and integration requirements across approved classified and unclassified environments, IC cloud, restricted networks, and multiple security domains; work with security and accreditation stakeholders on identity and access management, data handling, cross-domain constraints, the Risk Management Framework, Authority to Operate, and applicable IC security requirements such as ICD 503.
Partner with customer security, privacy, civil liberties, legal, and analytic leaders to incorporate human oversight, source provenance, explainability, model evaluations, red-teaming, bias mitigation, and lifecycle monitoring consistent with the IC’s AI ethics principles and analytic standards.
Anticipate and mitigate technical, operational, contractual, and mission risks; manage changing requirements, integration dependencies, delivery tradeoffs, and escalation paths while maintaining program velocity and stakeholder confidence.
Support early relationship-building, opportunity qualification, solution shaping, and proposal development with Account Directors and partners; bring mission and technical insight to commercial strategy, statements of work, customer acceptance, and long-term IC account growth.