Partnership Sales Manager

About the team

The Partnerships team supports OpenAI's mission by building and managing external relationships that expand product reach, accelerate adoption, strengthen strategic capabilities, and help the company scale responsibly. We partner across the organization to develop a go to market ecosystem strategy, create shared value, and support relationships that are critical to OpenAI's growth.

About the role

We're looking for a Partnerships Sales Manager to lead high-impact co-sell relationships across our go to market sales teams and our system integrators and solution partners. You'll manage a portfolio of strategic external partners-including technology platforms, distribution channels, service providers, and other ecosystem partners-and work closely with internal sales teams to turn business needs into effective partnership strategies in order to deliver customer value and outcomes.

This role combines relationship management, commercial judgment, and hands-on execution. You'll help evaluate new partners, negotiate agreements, improve existing programs, and create the operating mechanisms needed to manage partnerships at scale.

This role is based in New York in office 3 days a week.

In this role, you will

• Own and deepen relationships with key strategic and ecosystem partners.

• Drive a partner first strategy across your assigned field territory alongside GTM teams

• Develop partnership strategies aligned with OpenAI's product, go-to-market, and operational priorities.

• Source, evaluate, and onboard new partners and service providers.

• Lead commercial negotiations in partnership with Legal, Business Operations, Procurement, Security, and other stakeholders.

• Translate complex business requirements into clear partner selection criteria and operating plans.

• Establish performance metrics, governance processes, and regular business reviews for strategic relationships.

• Identify opportunities to improve economics, service quality, resilience, and scalability across the partner portfolio.

• Coordinate cross-functional initiatives involving Sales, Product, Engineering, Legal, Security, Marketing, Business Operations, and other partner-facing teams.

• Monitor market developments, ecosystem shifts, and emerging capabilities across relevant partner categories.

• Prepare recommendations and decision materials for senior leaders.

• Anticipate partnership risks and lead their resolution with internal and external stakeholders.

You might thrive in this role if you

• Have 7+ years of experience in strategic partnerships, business development, ecosystem development, platform partnerships, go-to-market alliances, or a related field.

• Have direct sales and/or sales overlay experience.

• Have managed complex relationships with technology platforms, distribution partners, service providers, infrastructure companies, or other critical strategic partners.

• Are an effective negotiator with strong commercial instincts and experience structuring sophisticated agreements.

• Can analyze commercial and operational data and turn it into clear recommendations.

• Work well across technical, commercial, legal, go-to-market, and operational teams.

• Are comfortable navigating ambiguity, setting priorities, and building new processes in a fast-moving environment.

• Communicate clearly with executives, partners, and subject-matter experts.

• Pair strategic thinking with a willingness to own detailed execution.

• Exercise excellent judgment when working with confidential or sensitive information.

Preferred qualifications

• Experience supporting a rapidly scaling global technology company.

• Familiarity with technology ecosystems, platform and infrastructure business models, distribution channels, go-to-market partnerships, or partner risk management.

• Experience developing partner scorecards, governance frameworks, and executive business reviews.

• Background working in a regulated or operationally complex environment.

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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