Higher Education AI Strategy Director

OpenAI; New York (NY); On-site; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

OpenAI is seeking an Account Director for Higher Education in AMER to own strategic relationships with colleges and systems as they move from experimentation to responsible, institution-wide transformation. You will lead end-to-end revenue and adoption, coordinating cross-functional teams to design evaluations, pilots, and deployment plans, translating AI capabilities into institutional value.

This role demands deep AI know-how, governance awareness, and a mission-driven approach to scalable

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience selling platform-as-a-service and/or software-as-a-service solutions, with a sustained record of meeting or exceeding meaningful revenue targets through complex, multi-year enterprise sales motions.
• Direct experience selling to higher education institutions or systems, with a strong understanding of decentralized decision-making, academic and administrative stakeholders, governance, procurement, privacy, security, and change management.
• Demonstrated ownership of consumption- or usage-based revenue, including forecasting usage, driving adoption, creating new use cases, and converting customer outcomes into expansion.
• The technical depth to learn complex AI products, lead effective discovery, partner closely with technical teams, explain technical concepts accurately at both executive and practitioner altitudes, and translate them into academic, operational, research, and commercial outcomes.
• Experience leading strategic transformations rather than isolated point-solution sales, including governance, change management, adoption, and measurable operational, academic, research, or user outcomes.
• Strong executive presence, structured communication, and the ability to earn trust across senior leaders, technical experts, faculty, administrators, and end users.
• Excellent account planning, qualification, negotiation, forecasting, and cross-functional orchestration skills.
• High judgment, curiosity, resilience, and comfort operating through ambiguity, product change, and evolving customer needs.
• A mission-driven approach to deploying AI responsibly and helping institutions build durable capability rather than short-lived pilots.

Responsibilities

• Own and execute the AMER higher education territory and account strategy, prioritizing institutions where OpenAI can support meaningful, responsible, and scalable transformation.
• Create pipeline and lead complex, multi-threaded new-business and expansion opportunities from first engagement through procurement, deployment, adoption, and value realization.
• Engage credibly with presidents, provosts, CIOs, CTOs, academic leaders, researchers, administrators, security teams, legal, procurement, finance, and end-user champions.
• Lead cross-functional pursuit and account teams across Solutions Engineering, Customer Success, Product, Research, Security, Legal, and other functions to design evaluations, pilots, technical validation, executive business cases, production deployments, and adoption plans.
• Translate AI model and platform capabilities, limitations, integration approaches, governance requirements, privacy, security, and safety considerations into clear institutional value, credible technical plans, and practical transformation roadmaps.
• Own new-business, subscription, and consumption revenue; forecast pipeline and usage-based growth; and use adoption, value realization, and expansion signals to manage the business.
• Develop durable executive relationships and a broad coalition of institutional champions across decentralized stakeholder groups.
• Bring structured market insight from higher education customers into product, policy, partnership, and go-to-market strategy.
• Represent OpenAI as a thoughtful partner at executive forums, industry events, customer advisory discussions, and the broader higher education ecosystem.

Skills

Enterprise SaaS sales

Higher education sales

Account strategy & growth

Multi-stakeholder governance

Forecasting & pipeline mgmt

Job description

OpenAI is seeking an Account Director for Higher Education in AMER to own strategic relationships with colleges and systems as they move from experimentation to responsible, institution-wide transformation. You will lead end-to-end revenue and adoption, coordinating cross-functional teams to design evaluations, pilots, and deployment plans, translating AI capabilities into institutional value.

This role demands deep AI know-how, governance awareness, and a mission-driven approach to scalable