Strategic Delivery Lead, Department of Energy & Science

About the team

The OpenAI for Government team brings frontier AI to public institutions to help them achieve their missions. We partner with government leaders scientists and technical teams to deploy AI tools responsibly with the reliability security and support needed for meaningful use.

Our Energy & Science pod supports the Department of Energy (DOE) U.S. national laboratories and the broader federal science community including NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF). We help these institutions apply frontier AI to scientific research engineering and mission operations through hands-on delivery tailored enablement and collaboration between researchers.

About the Role

The Strategic Delivery Lead Department of Energy & Science will shape and deliver high-impact AI engagements across DOE headquarters and the U.S. national laboratory ecosystem. You will turn customer priorities into practical deployments and sustained use helping scientists and mission teams apply OpenAI technology to research scientific computing knowledge discovery and operational workflows.

This individual contributor role reports to the leader of Federal Civilian and State & Local Government. You will work alongside the pods Account Director and Applied AI Architect coordinating Research Product Engineering Policy Security and Enablement resources. The Account Director owns commercial strategy contracts and quota; you own delivery coordination adoption and customer outcomes without an individual sales quota.

You will lead execution across customer and OpenAI workstreams: define scope milestones acceptance criteria dependencies and success measures; surface risks; resolve blockers; and communicate progress to researchers lab directors and DOE leadership. You are accountable for agreed delivery commitments and customer acceptance. Engineering and Product teams remain responsible for technical implementation and operation of the systems they own.

This is a high-trust high-autonomy role combining senior relationship leadership with hands-on execution. Success requires sound judgment technical fluency strong program management and the ability to turn executive alignment into useful technology in scientists hands.

This role is based in Washington DC with domestic travel for high-value customer engagements workshops and delivery milestones.

In this role you will:

• Build trusted relationships with DOE leadership lab directors research leaders and technical and mission teams to identify priorities and turn senior alignment into actionable engagements.

• Own delivery plans for assigned DOE and national lab engagements with clear milestones accountable owners customer acceptance criteria and measurable scientific or operational outcomes.

• Translate research and mission needs into requirements and decisions that engineers researchers and senior leaders can act on; communicate progress limitations risks and dependencies clearly.

• Connect national lab researchers with OpenAI Research Product and Engineering teams to assess promising scientific applications and move feasible opportunities into scoped supported projects.

• Coordinate the Applied AI Architect specialist engineers and customer technical teams on architecture data access evaluation integration and deployment requirements.

• Build sustained adoption through practical enablement user feedback workflow support and repeatable playbooks that can be applied across labs and other science agencies.

• Lead executive reviews and focused workshops in Washington and at customer sites bringing the right decision-makers and technical experts together to resolve issues and advance delivery.

• Identify security data infrastructure contractual and resourcing risks early; work with the accountable teams to resolve them and escalate decisions promptly.

• Prioritize across a small matrixed team make clear trade-offs and maintain momentum as customer needs and model capabilities evolve.

• Coordinate with the Account Director policy colleagues and partners on broader DOE and science engagement while keeping delivery commitments aligned with available resources and approved capabilities.

Youll thrive in this role if you:

• Have 10 years of experience leading complex technical programs customer delivery or transformation initiatives including substantial work with DOE U.S. national labs or comparable federal science institutions.

• Can meet customer-specific access requirements. An active DOE Q and/or U.S. Government TS/SCI clearance is preferred for engagements involving national security missions.

• Are willing to travel domestically when an in-person engagement materially advances customer priorities relationships or delivery; use Washington-based engagement and remote collaboration effectively.

• Understand DOE headquarters the national lab ecosystem and how government sponsors lab management researchers and technical teams make decisions and deliver work.

• Have led complex AI/ML enterprise software API cloud scientific computing or digital transformation engagements through implementation and sustained adoption.

• Bring executive presence and a record of influencing senior government and laboratory leaders while remaining personally accountable for follow-through with working teams.

• Translate scientific and mission goals into practical execution plans acceptance criteria and measures such as workflow adoption researcher productivity output quality and time to a validated result.

• Have enough technical fluency to evaluate AI use cases challenge assumptions and work credibly with architects and researchers on data integration model evaluation and deployment trade-offs.

• Are curious about frontier AI and actively experiment with the technology to understand its capabilities limitations and applications to scientific work.

• Build durable partnerships across scientists engineers security teams program owners and executives; thrive in ambiguity and take initiative in a fast-moving environment.

• See yourself as a bridge between frontier AI research and practical scientific impact with the judgment to distinguish a promising demonstration from a validated result.

• Help customers use AI responsibly with appropriate data protection human review provenance reproducibility and scientific validation.

• Existing relationships across DOE and the national labs experience with NNSA and familiarity with NASA or NSF are valuable.

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 OpenAIs 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 addition job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

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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.

Required Experience:

Senior IC