About the Position

Applied AI Architect, Government

Washington, DC

About the Team

The OpenAI for Government AI Architect team partners with public sector organizations to turn OpenAI's most capable models into meaningful, real-world impact. We work with government agencies, public institutions, and partner organizations serving the government to identify where AI can advance critical missions, design secure and scalable solutions, and help those solutions move from early exploration into sustained production adoption. The team brings together technical strategy, customer partnership, and practical deployment expertise, working closely with Sales, Product, Engineering, Research, Security, Global Affairs, and specialist delivery teams to help public sector customers adopt advanced AI responsibly and effectively.

About the Role

As an AI Architect, you will be the senior technical owner for a named portfolio of customers and the primary technical counterpart to their leadership teams. You will shape each customer's AI strategy and guide their journey from pre-sales discovery and solution evaluation through deployment, adoption, and measurable mission impact.

You will own the technical account plan across ChatGPT Enterprise, the OpenAI API, Codex, and other agentic AI solutions. In partnership with the Account Director, you will translate mission priorities into a focused use-case portfolio, an actionable adoption roadmap, and a clear path to durable customer value. The Account Director leads the overall account strategy and relationship, while you lead the technical strategy, customer journey, and path to production impact.

You will remain accountable for the technical outcome while bringing in the right specialists across deployment, implementation, enablement, security, product, and partners to provide deeper expertise and execute work where needed. This role calls for strong public sector fluency, sound architectural judgment, and the ability to move confidently between executive strategy and hands-on technical conversations.

This role is based in Washington, D.C. We use a hybrid work model of three days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.

Responsibilities

Serve as the primary technical advisor and long-term technical relationship owner for a named portfolio of public sector customers and pre-sales prospects.
Partner with Account Directors on account strategy while owning the technical account plan, technical milestones, adoption priorities, and expansion opportunities.
Lead discovery with agency leaders, mission owners, executives, and technical teams to identify, qualify, and prioritize use cases tied to meaningful mission and operational outcomes.
Develop clear Applied AI Architectures spanning models, applications, data, integration, identity, security, privacy, governance, evaluation, and deployment.
Guide customers through technical evaluations, demonstrations, workshops, prototypes, and proofs of value, building confidence in both the solution and its path to production.
Help customers navigate the security, compliance, governance, and deployment requirements that shape AI adoption in the public sector.
Maintain a focused use-case portfolio with clear decision criteria, ownership, blockers, success measures, delivery needs, and adoption plans.
Develop trusted relationships and technical champions across CIOs, CTOs, CISOs, Chief Data and AI Officers, program leaders, engineering teams, and other customer stakeholders.
Qualify and coordinate support from Deployment Engineering, implementation, training and enablement, security, product and domain specialists, partners, and other delivery teams.
Remain accountable for technical progress and customer outcomes while ensuring delivery teams own implementation execution once engaged.
Track adoption, usage, account health, production readiness, and measurable mission impact, intervening early when risks threaten value realization.
Apply public sector and mission expertise to recognize repeatable patterns, sharpen customer priorities, and identify relevant expansion opportunities.
Share customer insights with Product, Engineering, and Research, translating field learnings into better products, architecture guidance, and reusable practices.

Requirements

Significant experience in customer-facing technical roles such as solutions architecture, solutions engineering, technical account leadership, AI deployment, or technical customer success.
Experience guiding complex organizations from technical evaluation through production adoption and measurable impact.
Experience working with government agencies, public institutions, or government contractors and understanding how mission priorities, security, compliance, governance, and procurement considerations shape technology adoption.
Ability to build credibility with senior technical and government leaders while communicating equally well with hands-on engineers and program teams.
Strong software and cloud architecture foundations, including APIs, distributed systems, data integration, identity, security, and privacy.
Understanding of modern AI systems, frontier models, agentic applications, model evaluation, retrieval, and enterprise AI workflows.
Ability to prototype, explain technical tradeoffs, and work confidently with APIs, SDKs, and languages such as Python or JavaScript.
Sound judgment about when to go deep personally, when to involve specialists, and how to establish clear handoffs and ownership.
Experience developing technical account plans, prioritizing complex customer portfolios, and connecting adoption to measurable outcomes.
Meaningful expertise in a relevant public sector mission or customer segment.
Ability to communicate clearly and turn ambiguity into a practical technical narrative, executive decision, or action plan.
Collaborative mindset and a deep care for helping public sector organizations deploy advanced AI safely and responsibly.

We Offer

Competitive compensation package
Hybrid work model (three days in the office per week)
Relocation assistance for new employees
Opportunity to work with cutting-edge AI technologies
Collaborative and inclusive work environment

About the Company

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.

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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.

Applied AI Architect, Government

Job description