Account Director, Life Sciences
OpenAIRole Description & Requirements
About the team
OpenAI's mission is to build safe artificial general intelligence (AGI) which benefits all of humanity. This long-term undertaking brings the world's best scientists, engineers, and business professionals into one lab together to accomplish this.
In pursuit of this mission, our Go To Market (GTM) team helps customers understand, adopt, and deploy OpenAI's technology across their most important workflows. The team is made up of Sales, Solutions, Support, Marketing, and Partnerships professionals who work together to bring AI to as many people and organizations as possible.
About the role
As an Account Director focused on Life Sciences, you will own executive-level relationships with organizations across biopharma, medical technology, and life science services. This includes pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, medical device and diagnostics companies, contract research organizations, contract development and manufacturing organizations, research tools companies, and laboratory or scientific services providers.
This is a role for someone who understands how life sciences companies create, validate, manufacture, commercialize, and support scientific and medical products. You will help these customers evaluate and deploy OpenAI's technology to accelerate R&D, improve clinical and regulatory workflows, scale scientific and medical content operations, modernize commercial and field teams, and improve knowledge work across highly regulated environments.
The role blends scientific literacy, enterprise sales discipline, technical curiosity, and relationship-driven account leadership. You will partner closely with solutions, research, product, legal, security, and compliance teams to design secure, responsible, and high-impact AI deployments for life sciences customers.
This role can be remote but New York or San Francisco office locations are preferred. We use a hybrid work model of three days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.
In this role, you will:
Manage a focused portfolio of strategic life sciences accounts across biopharma, medtech, diagnostics, CROs, CDMOs, and life science services
Develop long-term account plans that map OpenAI capabilities to customer priorities across R&D, clinical development, regulatory, manufacturing, medical affairs, commercial, and enterprise IT
Lead complex, multi-stakeholder sales cycles with executives, technical leaders, scientific stakeholders, procurement, legal, privacy, security, and compliance teams
Identify and shape high-value AI use cases such as drug discovery support, clinical trial operations, regulatory submissions, medical writing, pharmacovigilance, field enablement, customer operations, and enterprise knowledge workflows
Partner with solutions and research engineering to design pilots and deployments that demonstrate measurable business, scientific, and operational impact
Collaborate with privacy, security, legal, and compliance partners to support responsible AI deployment in regulated life sciences environments, including GxP and global data governance considerations
Own revenue, consumption, pipeline, forecast accuracy, and expansion strategy for your accounts
Monitor life sciences industry trends, regulatory shifts, competitive dynamics, and customer buying patterns to inform account strategy and the broader OpenAI go-to-market motion
Represent OpenAI in life sciences industry forums and customer executive conversations, including settings such as JPM, BIO, HLTH, and targeted biopharma or medtech leadership events
Partner cross-functionally with marketing, partnerships, communications, and product teams to build a repeatable life sciences go-to-market motion
We're seeking someone with experience including:
14+ years selling complex enterprise software, cloud, AI, data, or platform solutions to life sciences customers
A track record of building and growing strategic accounts across biopharma, medtech, diagnostics, CROs, CDMOs, life science services, or adjacent scientific industries
Proven success achieving and exceeding multi-million-dollar annual revenue targets in complex, regulated enterprise environments
Experience managing C-suite and senior stakeholder relationships across R&D, clinical, regulatory, manufacturing, medical affairs, commercial, enterprise IT, security, and data organizations
Strong understanding of life sciences workflows such as drug discovery, translational research, clinical development, regulatory submissions, quality, manufacturing, medical affairs, market access, and commercial operations
Familiarity with data privacy, security, compliance, validation, GxP, and responsible AI considerations relevant to life sciences companies
Demonstrated ability to create account strategy, navigate large buying committees, build executive consensus, and close complex platform or transformation deals
Ability to translate technical AI capabilities into concrete business, scientific, and operational outcomes for life sciences customers
You might thrive in this role if you:
Are energized by helping life sciences companies use AI to advance scientific discovery, product development, and commercial impact
Can translate complex scientific, technical, regulatory, and business needs into clear AI adoption strategies
Are comfortable selling to both technical and non-technical executives across R&D, commercial, IT, data, security, legal, and compliance functions
Bring curiosity about biology, medicine, devices, diagnostics, research services, and the changing operating model of life sciences companies
Are a builder who enjoys creating repeatable sales motions, customer narratives, and proof points in an emerging market
Are a strategic account leader who can move from executive vision to practical pilot design, adoption planning, expansion strategy, and measurable customer impact
Are comfortable operating with ambiguity and creating clarity across complex, cross-functional engagements
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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