Account Director, Government

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 Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) and APAC 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 senior Account Director (AD) to lead OpenAI’s public-sector work across ANZ, with a wider remit to develop selected priority opportunities across APAC. ANZ will be the centre of gravity for the role: 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 can be based in Sydney (Hybrid model, 3 days in office) or remotely from Canberra.

In this role, you will

• Own a focused portfolio of ANZ public-sector accounts, while developing selected priority opportunities in APAC in line with OAI4G’s international strategy.

• 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 ANZ and relevant APAC 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 ANZ and priority APAC 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, public-sector technology sales, business development, consulting, transformation, systems integration, or a closely related field, with meaningful ownership of complex customer outcomes.

• Direct government experience or very significant experience working with government customers, ideally including sensitive agencies, national-security-adjacent environments, regulated missions, or high-consequence operational workflows.

• A current Australian Government security clearance, with the ability to maintain the clearance required for the role.

• Designing and executing complex deal strategies, including opportunity shaping before formal procurement, multi-stakeholder qualification, proposal development, negotiations, and closure.

• Working directly with senior public-sector executives and decision-makers, alongside technical, operational, procurement, policy, and security stakeholders.

• Navigating Australia’s public-sector procurement, contracting, security, privacy, data-residency, and compliance requirements; familiarity with New Zealand and/or other APAC public-sector environments is valuable.

• Selling or delivering enterprise SaaS, cloud, AI/ML, data platforms, cybersecurity, API-based products, or other complex technology solutions in highly regulated environments.

• Communicating technical, commercial, and strategic concepts clearly to both executive and working-level audiences, including the ability to explain where AI is and is not an appropriate fit.

• Collaborating across Sales, Solutions, Partnerships, Research, Engineering, Technical Success, Legal, Security, Policy, Global Affairs, Finance, and Operations to move complex opportunities forward.

• Operating with high ownership and sound judgement in ambiguous, fast-changing environments, while managing competing priorities across countries and time zones.

• Travelling regularly within ANZ, and periodically across APAC, to work on-site with customers and partners.

Nice to have

• Deep relationships across Australian Commonwealth, state and territory, defence, national security, or other sensitive public-sector communities.

• Experience building or working through local system-integrator, reseller, cloud-provider, or strategic-partner ecosystems.

• Experience leading AI, digital, technology, or business-transformation initiatives from use-case shaping through deployment and adoption.

• Familiarity with public-sector AI governance, responsible AI, cybersecurity, data sovereignty, and assurance requirements.

• Experience developing opportunities across more than one APAC market and adapting to different political, cultural, regulatory, and procurement contexts.

• Engineering, technical, policy, or operational experience that helps you translate complex AI capabilities into credible public-sector outcomes.

You will thrive in this role if you

• Are customer-centric. You work to understand public institutions’ missions and constraints deeply, and help them achieve meaningful outcomes with AI.

• Are a strategist. You think years ahead, balance ANZ priorities with a broader APAC perspective, and align internal and external stakeholders around a clear point of view.

• Are a builder. You create repeatable account, partner, capture, and delivery practices that can scale while adapting to local requirements.

• Have strong judgement. You can navigate sensitive environments, incomplete information, competing priorities, and responsible-use considerations with integrity and composure.

• Are technically curious. You can learn quickly, engage credibly with specialists, and translate frontier AI capabilities, limitations, and trade-offs for government audiences.

• Care about public mission impact. You want to help governments use AI responsibly and effectively in ways that improve outcomes for the communities they serve.

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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