Account Director, State and Local Government

About the team
OpenAI’s mission is to build safe artificial general intelligence (AGI) that benefits all of humanity. This long-term undertaking brings the world’s best scientists, engineers, and business professionals together in one organization to accomplish this.

In pursuit of this mission, our OpenAI for Government team helps customers understand how to leverage and deploy our highly capable AI products across their organizations. The team comprises Sales, Solutions, Support, Marketing, and Partnerships professionals who collaborate to create valuable solutions and bring AI to as many users as possible.

About the role

Our OpenAI for Government team has a unique mission to help government customers understand the transformative impact that highly capable AI models can have on their agencies and missions. This role combines technical understanding, strategic vision, partnership management, and a value-driven approach tailored to state and local government customers.

This Account Director will own a portfolio of strategic state and local government accounts. The ideal candidate brings deep knowledge of the state and local government landscape, established relationships with government leaders, and a track record of driving technology adoption within complex public sector organizations.

You’ll lead key opportunities through the entire sales cycle, from pipeline development through close. You’ll collaborate closely with researchers, engineers, and solution strategists to help government customers advance their missions through AI.

This role requires regular travel to engage customers, partners, and industry stakeholders.

This role is based in Washington, DC, or San Francisco. 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 accounts, developing and executing comprehensive account plans

• Lead state and local government customers through their AI adoption journeys, from initial consideration through successful deployment

• Partner with Solutions and Research Engineering to build and execute complex customer programs and projects

• Own and manage a consumption revenue target

• Oversee consumption revenue forecasting and reporting

• Analyze key account metrics and provide insights to internal and external stakeholders

• Closely monitor the state and local government landscape—including agencies, policies, competitors, and partners—to inform product roadmaps and corporate strategies

• Build and maintain executive relationships with state CIOs, agency leaders, innovation offices, procurement stakeholders, and other senior public sector decision-makers

• 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 state and local government

• Foster the development of our company culture within the state and local government practice

We're seeking someone with experience including:

• Bringing 10+ years of experience selling enterprise technology solutions to state and local government customers or leading digital transformation, AI adoption, enterprise technology modernization, innovation initiatives, or large-scale technology deployments from within state or local government organizations

• Consistently achieving annual state and local government revenue targets exceeding $2 million over multiple years

• Designing and executing complex deal strategies, including navigating state procurement processes, cooperative purchasing vehicles, requests for proposals, and government contracting mechanisms

• Supporting growth in fast-paced, high-performance environments

• Working directly with senior government executives and agency leaders

• Communicating technical and strategic concepts clearly to government customers and internal stakeholders

• Leading high-visibility customer events, executive briefings, and industry engagements

• Gathering, distilling, and applying detailed market intelligence, including agency priorities, policy changes, and competitor activity

• Selling to large state agencies, cities, counties, public safety organizations, transportation agencies, or other complex state and local government organizations

• Building strong relationships across government ecosystems, including with government leaders, technology stakeholders, and partner communities

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Thrive in a startup environment. You can operate at a highly strategic level while remaining willing to roll up your sleeves and execute tactically as an account lead.

• Are a strategist. You deeply understand go-to-market best practices and continually raise the bar for the organization. You think and plan across a multiyear horizon and bring internal and external stakeholders along with your strategy.

• Are customer-centric. You are motivated to understand customers’ priorities and help them achieve mission-critical objectives using AI. You build trusted relationships with government executives and stakeholders across agencies.

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

• Are a builder. You enjoy shaping how our company grows its state and local government business. You excel at establishing robust systems and processes tailored to government requirements and executing them with precision and agility.

• Are excited by new challenges. You thrive when solving complex government-specific problems. Bespoke challenges requiring multidimensional knowledge excite you, and you’re eager to experiment with innovative solutions in government environments.

• Push the organization forward. You proactively contribute to strategic initiatives and help advance our state and local government go-to-market approach. You plan years ahead, effectively aligning internal stakeholders and external government partners 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.

For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.

Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates. 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.

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