---
title: 'Sales Manager, Startups | New Business UK&I at OpenAI'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/sales-manager-startups-new-business-uk-i-openai-london-w0tqrgw7mzms'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-11-05'
---

# Sales Manager, Startups | New Business UK&I at OpenAI

- **Company:** [OpenAI](https://feeny.ai/companies/openai)
- **Location:** London, United Kingdom
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-11-05
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-05
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/646bf721-c634-4863-ae3c-35e56701d9e0

## Job description

## About the team

The OpenAI Startups team helps founders build and scale products with AI. We combine technical understanding, commercial judgement and startup ecosystem relationships to help customers build and grow their businesses with OpenAI.

## About the role

You will lead a startup sales team in EMEA, helping founders and their teams build and grow with OpenAI. The role brings together early-stage customer acquisition and commercial complexity, with opportunities that require a thoughtful understanding of customer needs, technical requirements and business priorities. You will hire and develop Account Directors, set clear direction and coach the team to build trusted customer relationships and deliver sustainable growth. You will work closely with technical and commercial partners to help customers understand the value of OpenAI and make confident decisions. This role is based in London. We use a hybrid work model of three days in the office per week. In this role, you'll:

- Recruit, onboard and develop a strong team of Account Directors. Set clear expectations, coach customer conversations and deal strategy, and give direct, actionable feedback.
- Build and execute a sales strategy that wins new startup customers and supports their long-term success.
- Coach the team through early-stage customer acquisition and sales opportunities with complex technical and commercial requirements.
- Maintain a healthy pipeline and reliable forecasts, using sound judgement and a clear understanding of customer needs.
- Build trusted relationships with founders, technical leaders and commercial decision-makers. Help customers understand how OpenAI can support their products and business goals.
- Partner across technical, product, marketing and commercial teams to support customers and resolve challenges.
- Develop repeatable sales practices that help a growing team work effectively while maintaining a high standard of customer experience.
- Bring customer feedback and market insight into the business to help improve our products and how we serve startups.

We're seeking experience in:

- Six or more years leading sales teams, including hiring, developing and managing technical sellers in fast-changing markets.
- Working closely with startups as a founder, early employee or commercial leader serving startup customers.
- Selling platform or software products in a product-led or consumption-based business, with a record of converting technical adoption into revenue.
- Leading early-stage customer acquisition or complex commercial sales, with the judgement to adapt to different customer needs and buying processes.
- Building repeatable sales processes while maintaining a strong focus on customer fit and value.
- Coaching technical and commercial discovery, qualifying opportunities and managing evidence-based forecasts.
- Discussing AI applications and APIs credibly with founders and technical leaders, and connecting technical capabilities to business value.
- Working across technical, product, marketing, operational and commercial teams, and translating customer learning into better products and programmes.

You'll thrive here if You understand founder urgency, earn trust through useful advice and communicate candidly about what is possible. You create clarity when priorities change, are curious about AI and learn quickly. You enjoy developing sellers and building a collaborative team that delivers for customers. What success looks like: Your team builds strong customer relationships, wins new startup business and helps customers achieve lasting value with OpenAI. Sellers grow in capability and confidence, commercial judgement is strong, and the team delivers reliable results as the business grows.

## 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. [OpenAI Homepage](https://openai.com/)

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