The role
About the team
OpenAI’s mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. OpenAI for Government (OAI4G) helps public-sector institutions understand, adopt, and deploy highly capable AI products in support of their missions. The team brings together Sales, Solutions, Partnerships, Technical Success, Legal, Security, Policy, Global Affairs, and other cross-functional partners to help governments use AI responsibly and effectively.
As part of OAI4G’s International Public Sector team, you will help public institutions in the UK, Middle East (ME) and Latin America (LATAM) translate frontier AI into secure, compliant, mission-aligned outcomes. We work across varied procurement, regulatory, security, sovereignty, and commercial environments, while maintaining a consistent commitment to safety, reliability, and public benefit.
About the role
We are seeking a Global Account Director (GAD) to lead OpenAI’s public-sector work across the UK, ME and LATAM. You will build trusted relationships with government leaders, develop and execute account strategies, create and close complex opportunities, and help customers move from initial interest to successful adoption.
This is a full-cycle, highly cross-functional sales role that combines technical understanding, strategic vision, partnership management, and value-driven execution. You will work with senior government, operational, technical, procurement, policy, and security stakeholders to identify high-impact AI use cases and translate them into credible commercial and deployment pathways across the OpenAI Platform API and Codex and ChatGPT Enterprise.
You will also be an accountable customer leader after signature, working alongside specialist delivery and technical teams to keep customer outcomes, milestones, adoption, risks, and executive alignment on track. The role requires excellent judgement, executive presence, local fluency, and the ability to move between strategy, discovery, capture, procurement, delivery governance, and relationship management without day-to-day direction.
This role is based in London. 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 will
- Own a focused portfolio of UK, ME and LATAM public-sector accounts.
- Build and execute comprehensive account plans that map mission priorities, stakeholders, procurement paths, partners, use cases, risks, and long-term expansion opportunities.
- Drive complex opportunities through the full sales cycle, from pipeline generation, discovery, qualification, capture, and commercial strategy through negotiation, closure, adoption, and expansion.
- Lead public-sector customers through their AI adoption journey, helping them identify responsible, high-impact use cases and connect mission outcomes to OpenAI’s capabilities and limitations.
- Translate between government leaders, end users, technical teams, policy and security stakeholders, and internal product and engineering partners, clearly communicating requirements, progress, risks, and dependencies.
- Serve as the accountable customer lead for engagements tied to clear outcomes, customer milestones, adoption measures, and commercial commitments, coordinating closely with technical specialists.
- Work closely with the Partnerships team, global and regional system integrators, cloud and technology providers, local delivery partners, resellers, and strategic international partners to shape joint pursuits, deployment models, and purchasing paths.
- Develop capture strategies, competitive positioning, win themes, teaming decisions, and proposal narratives that reflect UK, ME and LATAM market conditions.
- Navigate public-sector procurement, tendering, security, data-residency, compliance, and sovereignty requirements, bringing Legal, Security, Policy, Global Affairs, Finance, and other partners into opportunities early.
- Build trusted relationships with senior government executives and decision-makers, while staying close to operational users and technical stakeholders whose workflows determine successful adoption.
- Maintain accurate pipeline, forecasting, account records, customer follow-up, and executive reporting, with disciplined follow-through across markets and time zones.
- Monitor the government, technology, procurement, partner, and competitive landscape across UK, ME and LATAM markets, surfacing insights that inform product roadmaps and go-to-market strategy.
- Represent OpenAI at government, partner, and industry forums, strengthening networks and identifying opportunities that advance responsible public-sector adoption of AI.
We’re seeking someone with experience including
- 10+ years in government, diplomacy, national security, international development, multilateral institutions, public-sector technology sales, business development, consulting, transformation, systems integration, or a closely related field, with meaningful ownership of complex customer outcomes.
- Direct experience in government, diplomacy, national security, foreign affairs, or international organisations, or very significant experience working with those customers in sensitive, regulated, or high-consequence environments.
- Material experience operating credibly in sensitive or national-security-adjacent settings; an active or recently held government security clearance is valuable, and the ability to obtain or maintain any clearance required for the portfolio may be necessary.
- A strong record of shaping and closing complex cross-border deals: account planning, discovery, qualification, stakeholder mapping, capture, proposal development, negotiations, forecasting, closure, adoption, and expansion.
- Executive presence with senior diplomats, ministers, multilateral executives, government leaders, and decision-makers, alongside credibility with technical, operational, procurement, policy, and security stakeholders.
- Sound understanding of multilateral and public-sector procurement, funding, contracting, security, privacy, data-residency, sovereignty, and compliance requirements across more than one ME or LATAM market.
- Ability to orchestrate regional and international partners, including system integrators, resellers, cloud providers, development institutions, advisory partners, and delivery partners.
- Enough AI and enterprise-technology fluency to explain OpenAI’s products, capabilities, limitations, and responsible-use trade-offs clearly to diplomatic, multilateral, and government audiences, and to engage the right specialists early.
- High ownership, exceptional written and verbal communication, diplomatic judgement under ambiguity, strong capacity management across regions and time zones, and willingness to travel across ME and LATAM, and internationally as needed.
Nice to have
- Deep relationships across international organisations, regional bodies, development institutions, foreign affairs, defence, national security, or other sensitive public-sector communities.
- Experience developing opportunities across more than one ME or LATAM market, ideally with exposure to international organisations or regional bodies.
- Experience with AI/ML, cloud, data platforms, cybersecurity, API-based products, public-sector digital transformation, or regulated cross-border technology deployments.
- Experience moving a complex cross-border opportunity from early mission discovery through procurement, deployment governance, adoption, and measurable outcomes.
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 https://cdn.openai.com/policies/eeo-policy-statement.pdf.
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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