--- title: 'Account Director, Federal Partnerships (Defense) at OpenAI' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/account-director-federal-partnerships-defense-openai-washington-3zrj5brkq7zc' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-11-05' --- # Account Director, Federal Partnerships (Defense) at OpenAI - **Company:** [OpenAI](https://feeny.ai/companies/openai) - **Location:** Washington, DC - **Compensation:** $261k–$305k - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** hybrid - **Posted:** 2026-10-29 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-05 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/88d4dce1-a3ef-495f-b711-54988812336b ## Job description ## 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 Federal Partnerships team brings advanced AI to the defense industrial base. You’ll own a portfolio of emerging defense technology accounts and lead their account and deal strategy. You’ll also work with the broader partnerships team to grow larger strategic relationships. You’ll independently lead customer meetings and manage your assigned emerging defense technology portfolio, working with technical teams to turn customer needs into deployed capabilities. This is a demanding, hands-on role that requires initiative, persistence, and a strong sense of responsibility for getting useful AI capabilities into customers’ hands. This role is based in Washington, DC, with up to 25% travel. 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: - Lead account strategy and commercial execution for your emerging defense technology portfolio, from discovery and negotiation through close and expansion. - Support the broader partnerships team on larger strategic relationships across the defense industrial base. - Work with solutions and engineering teams to move customers from AI evaluation to deployment and sustained adoption. - Maintain accurate pipeline, consumption forecasts, and clear next steps. - Build trusted executive and technical relationships, connecting AI capabilities to business and mission outcomes. - Anticipate customer needs and bring customer and market insights into product and partnership decisions. - Coordinate across OpenAI to advance deals, remove blockers, and deliver on customer commitments. We're seeking someone with: - 8+ years of combined relevant experience across government, military service, defense technology, or PaaS/SaaS businesses, including at least 2 years in private-sector, customer-facing roles. - Military service and/or defense technology experience are valued. - Proven private-sector results, with clear examples of business or customer outcomes you personally drove. - Strong business acumen and strategic judgment, including the ability to assess opportunities, navigate stakeholders, and turn insight into action. - The ability to take initiative, set priorities, and deliver results amid the ambiguity and pace of defense technology. - Polished, clear communication and experience working directly with senior executives in government or the private sector. - Hands-on experience applying AI tools to practical problems, with the ability to explain the approach, results, and limitations. Strong understanding of APIs and workflow integration, with the ability to engage engineering teams credibly. - Initiative, urgency, and coachability, with a record of acting on feedback and following through. You might thrive in this role if you: - Are customer-centric. You understand customers’ priorities and take ownership of helping them deploy useful capabilities quickly. - Are deeply curious about AI. You regularly test new capabilities, explore their limits, and identify practical uses for customers. - Bring a strong work ethic. You take initiative, prepare thoroughly, and follow through. You move quickly through ambiguity without sacrificing judgment or trust. - Look ahead. You anticipate what customers will need next and help them identify new opportunities. ## 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. To notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant, please submit a report through [this form](https://form.asana.com/?d=57018692298241&k=5MqR40fZd7jlxVUh5J-UeA). No response will be provided to inquiries unrelated to job posting compliance. We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this [link](https://form.asana.com/?k=bQ7w9h3iexRlicUdWRiwvg&d=57018692298241). [OpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy](https://cdn.openai.com/policies/global-employee-and-contractor-privacy-policy.pdf) At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology. ## About OpenAI ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company with a mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits all of humanity. - **Entity Type**: Private – structured as a nonprofit parent (OpenAI Foundation) governing a for-profit public benefit corporation (OpenAI Group). The company has confidentially submitted a draft S-1 registration statement to the SEC, signaling a potential future IPO. - **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, USA - **Founded**: 2015 - **Founders**: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, John Schulman, Wojciech Zaremba, and others ## Core Business - **Primary industry**: Artificial intelligence research and deployment - **Target customers**: B2B (enterprises via API and platform), B2C (ChatGPT users), and developers (API, open-source models) - **Mission**: To ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) – AI systems that are generally smarter than humans – benefits all of humanity. ## Products & Services - **[ChatGPT](https://openai.com/chatgpt)**: Conversational AI assistant available via web and mobile, used by consumers and integrated into enterprise workflows. - **[GPT-4 API](https://openai.com/product)**: Large language model accessed via API for developers to build AI-powered applications (text generation, summarization, code assistance, etc.). - **[DALL-E](https://openai.com/dall-e-3)**: Image generation model that creates images from natural language descriptions. - **[Whisper](https://openai.com/research/whisper)**: Open-source speech recognition system. - **[OpenAI Agents](https://openai.com/)**: Emerging product category focused on autonomous AI agents that can perform tasks on behalf of users (announced June 2026). ## Market Standing - **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed in the provided sources. Widely reported in the press at ~$300 billion as of early 2026 (post-funding round), but this figure is not confirmed by OpenAI’s official materials. - **Key Metric**: Total funding exceeds $13 billion from Microsoft and other investors. The company has also confidentially filed a draft S-1 with the SEC (see [openai.com](https://openai.com/) – “Confidential submission of draft S-1”). - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Microsoft (strategic partner and largest investor), with additional participation from Thrive Capital, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and others. - **Growth Signals**: Active hiring with 721 open roles posted; expansion into agent-based products; confidential IPO filing; continued deployment of frontier models. ## Competitive Advantages - **First-mover & brand recognition**: ChatGPT became the fastest-growing consumer app in history, establishing OpenAI as the household name in generative AI. - **Research leadership**: Consistently publishes cutting-edge research (GPT-4, DALL-E 3, Whisper, etc.) and attracts top AI talent. - **Compute & infrastructure**: Exclusive partnership with Microsoft provides massive cloud computing resources (Azure) for training and inference. - **Unique governance structure**: The nonprofit parent ensures mission alignment (AGI benefiting humanity) while the for-profit arm can raise capital and scale products. ## Strategic Focus - **Safe AGI development**: Continued emphasis on safety research, alignment, and responsible deployment (e.g., safety systems, model provenance). - **Enterprise expansion**: Growing ChatGPT Enterprise and API offerings for businesses. - **Agentic AI**: Building autonomous agents that can “transform work” (announced June 2026). - **IPO preparation**: Confidential S-1 filing indicates intent to go public, which will require increased financial transparency and governance maturity. ## Why Work Here - **Culture & values**: OpenAI’s stated values include “Humanity first,” “Act with humility,” “Feel the AGI,” and “Ship joy.” Operating principles emphasize agency, creativity, rapid iteration, and intense focus. - **Benefits**: Competitive health insurance, mental healthcare support, 24-week paid birth-parent leave (plus 20 weeks for other parents), generous PTO, annual learning & development stipend, daily meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner), and a domestic conference budget. - **Work environment**: Hybrid/office-based (San Francisco headquarters). The company offers a residency program for researchers and engineers transitioning into AI. - **Impact**: Employees work directly on frontier AI models that shape the industry and society. The mission-driven nature attracts talent passionate about AGI’s societal implications. ## Sources 1. [OpenAI About Page](https://openai.com/about/) 2. [OpenAI Careers Page](https://openai.com/careers/) 3. [OpenAI Job Search](https://openai.com/careers/search) 4. 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