Account Director, Higher Education

The role

You will own strategic relationships with higher education institutions in AMER to drive AI transformation. You will manage the full commercial and customer journey from territory strategy and pipeline creation to deployment and value realization.

What you will do

• Execute the AMER higher education territory and account strategy.
• Create pipeline and lead complex new-business and expansion opportunities.
• Engage with presidents, provosts, CIOs, CTOs, and other institutional stakeholders.
• Lead cross-functional pursuit and account teams.
• Translate AI model and platform capabilities into institutional value and roadmaps.
• Own new-business, subscription, and consumption revenue.
• Develop executive relationships and institutional champions.
• Bring market insight from customers into product, policy, and go-to-market strategy.
• Represent OpenAI at executive forums and industry events.

Required qualifications

• 10+ years of experience selling platform-as-a-service and/or software-as-a-service solutions.
• Sustained record of meeting or exceeding revenue targets through complex enterprise sales.
• Direct experience selling to higher education institutions or systems.
• Understanding of decentralized decision-making, academic and administrative stakeholders, governance, procurement, privacy, security, and change management.
• Demonstrated ownership of consumption- or usage-based revenue.
• Technical depth to learn complex AI products and explain technical concepts.
• Experience leading strategic transformations including governance, change management, and adoption.
• Strong executive presence and structured communication.
• Account planning, qualification, negotiation, forecasting, and cross-functional orchestration skills.
• High judgment, curiosity, resilience, and comfort operating through ambiguity.

Nice to have

• Customer-centric approach starting with the institution's mission and constraints.
• Ability to move between boardroom strategy and technical working sessions.
• Energy for adoption, usage growth, and value realization.
• Ability to create repeatable plays while adapting to distinctive institutional cultures.
• Informed optimism about AI alongside rigor to surface risks and implementation realities.

Before you apply

• Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law.

About the company

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity.