Account Director, Federal DoD

OpenAI; Washington (District of Columbia); Remote; USD 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading company is seeking a Government Sales professional to drive AI adoption within defense and intelligence sectors. The role requires strategic vision, technical understanding, and partnership management to help customers leverage AI for national security missions. This remote position involves managing key accounts and collaborating with various teams to ensure successful deployment of AI solutions.

Qualifications

• 14+ years in platform-as-a-service or software-as-a-service sales.
• Consistently achieved defense and intelligence revenue targets of >$2M.

Responsibilities

• Manage key DOD and Intelligence Community accounts.
• Drive AI adoption from consideration to deployment.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams on customer programs.

Skills

Customer-Centric

Strategic Vision

Technical Understanding

Partnership Management

Job description

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 Government Sales team has a unique mission to help defense and intelligence customers understand the transformative impact that highly capable AI models can bring to their critical missions. This role combines technical understanding, strategic vision, partnership management, and value-driven strategy specifically tailored to DOD and Intelligence Community customers.

You’ll drive key opportunities through the entire defense and intelligence sales cycle, from pipeline generation to closure. You’ll collaborate closely with researchers, engineers, and solution strategists to help customers within the DOD and Intelligence Community advance their national security missions through AI.

This role is a remote role based in Washington, DC.

In this role, you'll:

Manage a focused set of key DOD and Intelligence Community accounts, developing and executing comprehensive account plans.

Lead defense and intelligence customers through their AI adoption journey, from consideration to successful deployment.

Partner with solutions and research engineering to build and execute complex defense and intelligence customer programs and projects.

Own and manage a DOD and Intelligence Community consumption revenue target

Oversee consumption revenue forecasting and reporting.

Analyze key DOD and Intelligence Community account metrics and provide insights to internal and external stakeholders.

Closely monitor the defense and intelligence 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 team members focused on defense and intelligence accounts.

Foster the development of our company culture within the DOD and Intelligence Community practice.

We're seeking someone with experience including:

14+ years selling platform-as-a-service and/or software-as-a-service specifically into DOD and Intelligence Community accounts.

Achieving defense and intelligence revenue targets of >$2M per year consistently over multiple years.

Designing and executing complex deal strategies within DOD and Intelligence Community contexts, including familiarity with government contracting, security clearances, and procurement processes.

Supporting growth in fast-paced, high-performance DOD and Intelligence Community environments.

Working directly with senior defense and intelligence executives and decision-makers.

Communicating technical and strategic concepts clearly to defense and intelligence customers and internal stakeholders.

Leading high-visibility defense and intelligence customer events, briefings, and industry engagements.

Gathering, distilling, and processing detailed DOD and Intelligence Community market intelligence (agency priorities, policy changes, competitor activities, etc.).

You might thrive in this role if you:

Are customer-centric. You are motivated to deeply understand defense and intelligence customers’ priorities and help them achieve their mission-critical objectives using AI. You build trusted relationships with senior executives and stakeholders across DOD and intelligence agencies.

Have a passion or deep curiosity about artificial intelligence. You embrace the opportunity to help deploy OpenAI’s technology in ways that advance national security missions and benefit humanity. You’re enthusiastic about educating defense and intelligence customers on AI capabilities and strategic implications.

Are a builder. You enjoy impacting how our company grows its defense and intelligence business. You excel in establishing robust systems and processes tailored to DOD and intelligence requirements, executing them with precision and agility.

Are excited by new challenges. You thrive when solving complex, mission-critical defense and intelligence-specific problems. Bespoke challenges requiring multidimensional knowledge excite you, and you’re eager to experiment with innovative solutions within national security environments.

Are a strategist. You deeply understand DOD and intelligence go-to-market best practices and proactively contribute to strategic initiatives. You plan years ahead, effectively aligning internal and external defense and intelligence stakeholders to achieve long-term objectives.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity.

We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with applicable law, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link .

At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.