Government Account Director, Defense

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 national security 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 Defense Community customers.

You’ll drive key opportunities through the entire defense sales cycle, from pipeline generation to closure. You’ll collaborate closely with researchers, engineers, and solution strategists to help customers within the Defense Community advance their national security 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 Defense Community accounts, developing and executing comprehensive account plans.

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

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

• Own and manage a Defense Community consumption revenue target.

• Oversee revenue forecasting and reporting.

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

• Closely monitor the defense and national security landscape (agencies, policies, competitors, partners, etc.) to inform product roadmaps and corporate strategies.

• Collaborate cross-functionally with solutions, product engineering, government affairs, 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 Defense Community practice.

We're seeking someone with experience including:

• 10+ years selling platform-as-a-service and/or software-as-a-service specifically into Defense accounts.

• Top Secret clearance.

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

• Designing and executing complex deal strategies within Defense or National Security contexts, including familiarity with government contracting, security clearances, and procurement processes.

• Supporting growth in fast-paced, high-performance Defense Community environments.

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

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

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

• Gathering, distilling, and processing detailed Defense 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 customers’ priorities and help them achieve their mission-crit