Account Director, State And Local Government (West Coast)

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 OpenAI for Government 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 OpenAI for Government 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 state and local government customers.

This Account Director will own a portfolio of strategic West Coast state and local government accounts, with a primary focus on California and other key public sector customers across the Western United States. 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 drive key opportunities through the entire State and Local Government 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 requires regular travel throughout the Western United States 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 state and local government accounts, developing and executing comprehensive state and local government account plans

• Lead state and local government 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 state and local government consumption revenue target

• Oversee consumption revenue forecasting and reporting

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

• Closely monitor the state and local government landscape (agencies, policies, competitors, partners, etc.) 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 state and local government-focused team members

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

We're seeking someone with experience including:

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

• Achieving state and local government revenue targets of >$2M per year consistently over multiple years

• Designing and executing complex state and local government deal strategies, including experience with state procurement processes, cooperative purchasing vehicles, RFPs, and government contracting mechanisms

• Supporting growth in fast-paced, high-performance state and local government environments

• Working directly with senior government executives and state and local government agency leaders

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

• Leading high-visibility state and local government customer events, briefings, and industry engagements

• Gathering, distilling, and processing detailed state and local government market intelligence (agency priorities, policy changes, competitor activities, etc.)

• Experience selling into large state agencies, cities, counties, public safety organizations, transportation agencies, higher education institutions, or other complex public sector organizations

• Deep familiarity with California and broader West Coast government ecosystems, including established relationships with government leaders, technology stakeholders, and partner communities

You might thrive in this role if you:

• ​​Thrive in a startup environment. This role requires someone who is able to operate at a very high strategic level, and willing to roll up your sleeves and execute at a tactical level as an account lead.

• 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 state and local government 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 state and local government missions and humanity. You’re enthusiastic about educating government customers on AI capabilities and strategic implications.

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

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

• Push the organization. You deeply understand state and local government go-to-market best practices and proactively contribute to strategic initiatives. You plan years ahead, effectively aligning internal and external state and local government 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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