Director, Partnerships - OpenAI for Government

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 business. The team is made of Sales, Solutions, Support, Marketing, and Partnership professionals that work together to create valuable solutions that will help bring AI to as many users as possible.

About the role

We are seeking a Partnerships leader to support execution of our government go-to-market strategy by building and managing high-impact partnerships across the federal ecosystem.

This role sits at the intersection of business development, strategic partnerships, and technical product alignment, supporting the pursuit and delivery of large-scale government programs. The candidate will work closely with internal leadership to structure partnerships, manage a high volume of partner relationships, and support capture efforts for major procurements.

The ideal candidate brings experience working with technology companies, system integrators, and federal agencies, with a strong ability to manage complex external relationships while maintaining operational discipline across multiple engagements. They will help identify and craft partnership agreements, coordinate partner resources, and align internal teams to deliver scalable solutions that meet mission requirements.

This role requires strong judgment, the ability to operate in fast-moving environments, and familiarity with how technology companies successfully sell into both enterprise markets and the U.S. government.

In this role, you'll:

• Manage a portfolio of strategic partners including government-facing technology companies and mission-focused startups.

• Evaluate inbound partnership opportunities and prioritize engagements that align with company strategy and government program pursuits.

• Maintain strong working relationships across a large partner ecosystem to support joint pursuits, product integrations, and program delivery.

• Coordinate partner activities across multiple simultaneous engagements while maintaining clear communication and operational rigor.

• Support the pursuit of government programs by coordinating with internal teams and external partners during capture and proposal development.

• Help structure partner roles and technical contributions for joint government opportunities.

• Contribute to capture strategy development, competitive positioning, and partner teaming decisions.

• Assist with preparation of proposal materials including partnership frameworks, technical narratives, and supporting documentation.

• Draft, review, and negotiate partnership agreements including teaming agreements, memoranda of understanding, and revenue-sharing frameworks.

• Work closely with legal, finance, and compliance teams to structure agreements that meet regulatory requirements and align partner incentives.

• Support negotiations with external partners to ensure agreements are scalable and aligned with company objectives.

• Partner with product, engineering, legal, and compliance teams to align internal resources with government and partner-driven opportunities.

• Represent the company at government and industry forums to strengthen partner networks and identify new opportunities.

We're seeking someone with experience including:

• 8-12+ years of experience in business development, partnerships, government contracting, or related roles.

• Demonstrated experience managing multiple strategic partners simultaneously in complex technology or government environments.

• Experience drafting and negotiating partnership agreements, teaming arrangements, or commercial contracts.

• Experience selling technology solutions into enterprise customers and/or U.S. government agencies.

• Familiarity with federal procurement processes including RFIs, RFPs, and proposal development as well as government acquisition structures.

• Strong ability to collaborate across legal, finance, engineering, and product teams.

• Excellent organizational skills with the ability to manage high volumes of partner engagements and/or sales opportunities.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills.

Preferred experience:

• Experience working with or partnering alongside technology providers.

• Familiarity with mission domains such as AI/ML, data platforms, cybersecurity, or defense systems.

• Experience supporting capture efforts for large federal programs.

• Prior experience in both technology companies and government-facing organizations.

• Active security clearance or eligibility to obtain one.

• Engineering degree or prior technical experience.

You might thrive in this role if you:

• 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 enterprises' and federal 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 federal 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 federal business. You excel in establishing robust systems and processes tailored to federal requirements, executing them with precision and agility.

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

• Push the organization. You deeply understand federal go-to-market best practices and proactively contribute to strategic initiatives. You plan years ahead, effectively aligning internal and external stakeholders 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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Compensation Range: $239.4K - $333K