Partner Sales and Development Leader, Southern Europe

About the Team OpenAI’s GTM Partnerships team builds a strategic, global partner ecosystem to accelerate customer success, support responsible enterprise AI adoption, and drive durable growth in support of OpenAI’s mission. We work across Sales, Solutions Engineering, Customer Success, Product, Marketing, Operations, and partner organisations to turn strategic partnerships into measurable customer and commercial outcomes. Cloud providers, global systems integrators, consulting firms, and technology partners play a critical role in helping customers adopt and scale OpenAI’s products. Our Partner Sales & Development team connects these partnerships to the field through joint account planning, opportunity development, coordinated sales execution, and delivery alignment that helps customers move from initial interest to production adoption. About the Role We are hiring a Partner Sales & Development Manager to lead our partner sales and development team for Southern EMEA. Reporting to the Head of GTM Partnerships, Europe you will manage and develop a regional team, own the regional partner business, and work alongside OpenAI Sales leadership and strategic partners to generate pipeline, advance complex pursuits, and drive revenue and customer adoption. This is a people management role that combines team leadership, partner business development, co-sell execution, and operational discipline. You will translate broader partnership priorities into a focused regional plan, set team goals and account coverage, and coach your team to engage the right partners at the right point in the customer journey. You will build relationships with partner field leaders and remain hands-on in priority pursuits, working with technical and delivery teams to turn commercial commitments into sustained customer value. You will be accountable for both regional business performance and the success of your team. We are looking for an experienced people manager who can hire and develop talent, establish clear expectations, manage performance, and build a culture of accountability, collaboration, and customer focus. In this role, you will: Own the partner sales and development plan for your assigned region, Southern Europe, aligning team coverage, target accounts, partner priorities, sales plays, and execution milestones with regional Sales leadership Drive regional commercial outcomes across partner-sourced and partner-attached pipeline, bookings, production adoption, and expansion, with clear accountability for business performance. Identify and develop new partner-led opportunities. Evaluate where partners can create differentiated customer value, establish executive sponsorship, and build a path from initial engagement to joint execution. Lead account mapping and joint account planning with OpenAI sellers and partner teams to identify whitespace, qualify opportunities, and prioritize the accounts and use cases with the greatest potential. Orchestrate complex co-sell pursuits, aligning account teams, partner sellers, technical stakeholders, and services organizations around customer needs, clear responsibilities, and mutual action plans. Build trusted relationships with regional partner executives and field leaders, while coordinating with global partner owners to ensure regional execution supports the broader partnership strategy. Partner with Solutions Engineering, Customer Success, Product, and partner delivery teams to address technical and implementation dependencies and help customers deploy, adopt, and expand AI workloads in production. Create repeatable field engagement models, partner enablement, sales plays, and escalation paths that make it easier for OpenAI and partner teams to work together effectively. Establish disciplined pipeline reviews, forecasting, business reviews, and performance reporting. Use evidence to assess partner contribution, diagnose underperformance, and adjust investments and priorities. Navigate complex stakeholder relationships, commercial tradeoffs, and competing priorities with sound judgment, working across Legal, Security, Finance, and other teams as needed. Hire, manage, coach, and develop a high-performing regional partner sales and development team. Set individual and team goals, provide regular feedback, manage performance, and support career growth. You might thrive in this role if you have: Significant experience in enterprise sales, partner sales, strategic alliances, or business development within cloud, AI, SaaS, or enterprise technology. A track record of owning regional or segment-level business outcomes and delivering measurable pipeline, revenue, and customer growth through partners. Demonstrated direct people management experience in partner sales, enterprise sales, alliances, or a related GTM function, including hiring, coaching, performance management, and team development. Deep familiarity with cloud providers, global systems integrators, consulting firms, or technology partner ecosystems, and an understanding of how their field organizations sell and deliver. Experience creating opportunities and leading complex partnerships or customer engagements from discovery and qualification through commercial execution, launch, adoption, and expansion. Strong enterprise sales fundamentals, including account planning, opportunity qualification, stakeholder mapping, negotiation, pipeline management, and forecasting. The ability to earn trust with Sales leaders, partner executives, technical teams, and peers, and to resolve disagreements constructively in a matrixed organization. Technical-commercial fluency: you can understand customer use cases, translate partner needs into clear requirements, and engage product and technical teams on implementation tradeoffs. Strong operational judgment and a builder mindset. You can create structure where a playbook does not yet exist, adapt as priorities change, and move quickly without sacrificing customer trust. Clear communication, executive presence, self-awareness, and a collaborative approach to feedback and problem-solving. Preferred qualifications: Experience managing geographically distributed teams and aligning account or territory coverage across a region. Experience building or scaling a regional partner sales or co-sell business at a high-growth technology company. Experience aligning sales and partner delivery organisations to support enterprise implementations and sustained production adoption. Familiarity with AI platforms, modern cloud architectures, cloud marketplaces, and enterprise procurement models. 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 . 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