Why This Job is Featured on The SaaS Jobs
This Account Director role sits at the intersection of enterprise SaaS selling and applied AI adoption, with a clear vertical focus on retail. It is notable in today’s SaaS landscape because it reflects how platform vendors are moving beyond generic tooling toward industry-specific deployments that touch core operating workflows, not just isolated pilots.
From a SaaS career standpoint, the role builds durable strengths in navigating complex buying committees, aligning technical product capabilities with business outcomes, and operating across the full arc of enterprise adoption. The emphasis on partnering with solutions and engineering functions also mirrors a broader shift in SaaS toward consultative, value-based motions where successful commercialization depends on credible implementation paths, governance, and measurable impact.
This position tends to suit senior GTM professionals who prefer long-horizon account strategy over transactional selling and who are comfortable coordinating multiple internal stakeholders while maintaining executive-level customer relationships. It also fits those who enjoy developing repeatable go-to-market patterns within a defined industry, and who want their expertise to compound across other enterprise SaaS contexts where security, privacy, and compliance shape deployments.
The section above is editorial commentary from The SaaS Jobs, provided to help SaaS professionals understand the role in a broader industry context.
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 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
As an Account Director focused on Retail, you will own executive-level relationships with leading retail organizations, including global brands, e-commerce platforms, and consumer goods companies. You’ll help these companies safely and effectively deploy OpenAI’s technology to transform customer experience, optimize supply chains, enhance merchandising strategies, and personalize consumer engagement.
This role blends market literacy, technical depth, business acumen, and relationship-driven enterprise sales. You will collaborate closely with researchers, engineers, and retail-focused solution strategists to design secure, compliant, and high-impact AI deployments.
This role is based in San Francisco. We use a hybrid work model of three days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.
In this role, you’ll:
Manage a focused portfolio of retail accounts, developing and executing on long-term strategic account plans
Lead complex, multi-stakeholder sales cycles spanning merchandising, operations, marketing, and commercial functions
Partner with solutions and research engineering to design pilots that demonstrate measurable business and customer impact
Collaborate with compliance, privacy, and security teams to ensure responsible deployment of AI in regulated environments
Own a revenue and consumption target; manage forecasts and pipeline reporting
Monitor industry and regulatory trends (e. FTC, consumer protection, etc.) to guide customer and product strategy
Represent OpenAI at industry conferences and thought-leadership events (e.g., NRF, Shoptalk)
Partner cross-functionally with marketing, partnerships, and communications to build the Retail go-to-market motion
We’re seeking someone with experience including:
14+ years selling complex enterprise software or platform-as-a-service solutions
4+ years selling to retail or consumer goods customers
Experience managing C-suite relationships across merchandising, IT, marketing, and commercial teams
Strong understanding of retail and consumer goods workflows (e.g., inventory management, customer analytics, e-commerce operations, marketing campaigns)
Familiarity with data privacy, compliance (PCI DSS, GDPR), and security considerations in retail
Demonstrated ability to design and execute complex deal and partnership strategies
You might thrive in this role if you:
Are customer-centric and can translate complex market and business needs into transformative AI solutions
Are passionate about advancing consumer experiences through the safe and ethical use of AI
Are a builder who enjoys designing scalable systems and repeatable sales motions from the ground up
Are a strategist who anticipates industry shifts and guides enterprise customers through them
Are energized by ambiguity and motivated to create structure and clarity across complex, cross-functional engagements
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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We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link.
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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.
