Account Director, Federal Partnerships

About the team 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. About the role 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. In this role, you'll: - 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 We're seeking someone with experience including: - 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.) You might thrive in this role if you: - 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 a