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Strategic Delivery Lead, Federal Civilian & State and Local Government

OpenAI· OpenAI for Gov
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Hybrid (Washington, DC)$266k - $370k + equityFull-timePosted 3w ago

About the role

Strategic Delivery Lead responsible for shaping and delivering high-impact AI engagements across federal civilian agencies and state & local governments, translating customer priorities into practical deployments, coordinating cross-functional teams, and ensuring measurable mission outcomes.

Responsibilities

  • Build trusted relationships with senior government leaders, program owners, and technical and mission teams to identify priorities and turn senior alignment into actionable engagements.
  • Own delivery plans for assigned federal civilian and state and local government engagements, with clear milestones, accountable owners, customer acceptance criteria, and measurable mission or operational outcomes.
  • Translate customer and mission needs into requirements and decisions that engineers, domain experts, and senior leaders can act on; communicate progress, limitations, risks, and dependencies clearly.
  • Connect customer mission and technical teams with OpenAI Research, Product, and Engineering teams to assess promising 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 applicable across agencies and government customers.
  • Lead executive reviews and focused workshops in Washington and at customer sites to resolve issues and advance delivery.
  • Identify security, data, infrastructure, contractual, and resourcing risks early; work with 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 Account Directors, policy colleagues, and partners on broader government engagement while keeping delivery commitments aligned with resources and capabilities.

Qualifications

  • 10+ years of experience leading complex technical programs, customer delivery, or transformation initiatives, including substantial work with federal civilian agencies, state or local governments, or comparable public institutions.
  • Ability to meet customer-specific access requirements; active DOE Q and/or U.S. Government TS/SCI clearance preferred for national security engagements.
  • Willingness to travel domestically for in-person engagements when valuable to customer priorities, while effectively using remote collaboration.
  • Understanding of government decision-making across executives, program owners, acquisition stakeholders, and technical teams.
  • Experience leading complex AI/ML, enterprise software, API, cloud, scientific computing, or digital transformation engagements through implementation and sustained adoption.
  • Executive presence with a track record of influencing senior government leaders and accountability for follow-through with working teams.
  • Ability to translate mission goals into practical execution plans, acceptance criteria, and measurable outcomes.
  • Technical fluency to evaluate AI use cases and collaborate credibly with architects and domain experts on data integration, model evaluation, and deployment trade-offs.
  • Curiosity about frontier AI and willingness to experiment to understand capabilities and limitations for government use cases.
  • Ability to build durable partnerships across mission teams, engineers, security, program owners, and executives; thrive in ambiguity and fast-moving environments.
  • Judgment to distinguish promising demonstrations from validated outcomes and to balance research with practical mission impact.
  • Experience or existing relationships with federal civilian agencies or state/local governments; familiarity with DOE, national labs, NASA, or NSF is valuable.

Skills

Required:Relationship managementDelivery planningRequirements translationCross-functional coordinationRisk management

Benefits

  • Medical, dental, and vision insurance for you and your family with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts
  • Pre-tax accounts for Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and commuter expenses
  • 401(k) retirement plan with employer match
  • Paid parental leave (up to 24 weeks for birth parents, 20 weeks for non-birthing parents) and paid medical/caregiver leave up to 8 weeks
  • Flexible PTO for exempt employees and up to 15 days annually for non-exempt employees
  • 13+ paid company holidays plus additional paid office closures
  • Mental health and wellness support
  • Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage
  • Annual learning and development stipend
  • Daily meals in offices and meal delivery credits where eligible
  • Relocation support for eligible employees
  • Additional taxable fringe benefits such as charitable donation matching and wellness stipends
Last updated Oct 15, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

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