Account Director, Retail

About the Team OpenAI’s mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. The Go-to-Market team helps organizations understand, adopt, and deploy OpenAI’s technology to solve meaningful business challenges and create lasting value. Our Retail team partners with leading retailers and consumer brands as they rethink how they engage customers, empower employees, and operate their businesses with AI. We work closely with leaders across merchandising, e-commerce, marketing, customer service, store operations, supply chain, technology, and data to identify high-impact opportunities and support responsible AI adoption at scale. The team operates cross-functionally with Solutions Engineering, Customer Success, Product, Partnerships, Marketing, and other teams across OpenAI to turn customer priorities into successful, durable deployments. About the Role We are looking for an experienced Account Director, Retail to help build and grow OpenAI’s business across the retail industry. You will own relationships with some of the world’s most influential retailers and consumer-facing organizations, helping executive and technical leaders understand how OpenAI’s products can transform their businesses. You will be responsible for developing account strategies, building qualified pipeline, navigating complex enterprise sales cycles, and expanding adoption across multiple functions and use cases. This role requires someone who combines deep enterprise sales experience with an understanding of the retail industry, strong executive presence, and the ability to translate emerging technology into clear business outcomes. You should be comfortable operating in a fast-moving environment, creating structure where it does not yet exist, and partnering across both business and technical teams. Success in this role will be measured not only by revenue growth, but also by the depth of customer relationships, the quality and scale of customer adoption, and your ability to help retailers deploy AI responsibly and successfully. In This Role, You Will Own and grow a portfolio of strategic retail accounts, with responsibility for pipeline creation, revenue, customer adoption, and long-term account expansion. Develop thoughtful account strategies that align OpenAI’s capabilities with each customer’s business priorities, technology roadmap, and AI transformation goals. Build trusted relationships with senior executives and functional leaders across technology, digital, data, merchandising, marketing, e-commerce, operations, supply chain, finance, and customer experience. Help customers identify and prioritize high-value AI use cases, including customer service, employee productivity, personalization, product discovery, merchandising, marketing content, store operations, and supply chain workflows. Lead complex, multi-stakeholder enterprise sales cycles from early discovery through commercial agreement, deployment, and expansion. Create new opportunities by engaging both executive decision-makers and operational teams throughout customer organizations. Partner closely with Solutions Engineering and technical stakeholders to connect customer needs with secure, scalable, and responsible implementation approaches. Collaborate with Customer Success to ensure customers move successfully from initial adoption to broader, measurable business impact. Coordinate with Product, Partnerships, Marketing, Legal, Finance, and other internal teams to remove barriers and deliver a strong customer experience. Develop business cases that clearly articulate expected value, required investment, implementation considerations, and success measures. Maintain a disciplined operating cadence across account planning, forecasting, pipeline management, and executive communication. Represent customer and industry perspectives internally, helping inform OpenAI’s retail strategy, product priorities, and go-to-market approach. Contribute to the continued development of OpenAI’s Retail business by sharing market insights, repeatable sales motions, and customer adoption patterns. You Might Thrive in This Role If You Have significant experience selling enterprise technology, cloud, data, AI, or software solutions to large retail or consumer organizations. Have a strong understanding of the retail industry, including the priorities and operating models of omnichannel retailers, e-commerce businesses, grocery companies, specialty retailers, or consumer brands. Have consistently met or exceeded ambitious revenue targets while managing complex, strategic accounts. Are skilled at developing relationships with C-level executives while also building credibility with technical, operational, and functional stakeholders. Can connect advanced technology to tangible business outcomes without overcomplicating the message. Have experience creating demand and developing new opportunities rather than relying solely on an established book of business. Understand how to navigate long, complex sales cycles involving security, legal, procurement, finance, data, and technology stakeholders. Are comfortable working with technical teams and discussing topics such as enterprise architecture, data strategy, security, governance, and implementation readiness. Bring a consultative approach to selling and are willing to challenge customers thoughtfully when it leads to better outcomes. Are highly organized and demonstrate strong judgment across account prioritization, forecasting, stakeholder management, and internal coordination. Operate effectively in ambiguous, rapidly evolving environments and are energized by helping build a business and category. Care deeply about responsible AI adoption and helping customers deploy powerful technology safely and thoughtfully. Preferred Qualifications Experience working with large, global retail organizations or complex consumer-facing enterprises. An established network of senior relationships across the retail industry. Experience selling emerging or transformational technologies where the customer use case and buying process are still developing. Familiarity with generative AI, machine learning, cloud platforms, data infrastructure, or enterprise application ecosystems. Experience supporting organization-wide transformation initiatives involving both business and technology leaders. A track record of expanding initial customer engagements into strategic, multi-year relationships. 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 Aff… 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. 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