Partner Director - AWS Alliance Partnership, Japan

Job description

About the Team OpenAI’s GTM Partnerships team builds a strategic global partner ecosystem designed to accelerate customer success, support secure AI adoption, and drive growth in support of OpenAI’s mission. We collaborate closely across Sales, Technical Success, Product, Marketing, Operations, and leadership teams to turn strategic partnerships into durable commercial outcomes. Within that ecosystem, AWS is one of OpenAI’s most strategic partners. Our opportunity extends beyond the direct alliance relationship: we aim to enable AWS teams and the surrounding services-partner ecosystem to build, deliver, and scale OpenAI-powered solutions on AWS infrastructure. Success requires close collaboration across AWS Japan alliance and field teams, AWS-focused SI practices, cloud architects, field sellers, delivery leaders, OpenAI’s Japan Partner Director, and OpenAI GTM teams. It requires strong operating discipline, scalable co-sell execution, and the ability to translate a strategic alliance into measurable customer outcomes. About the Role We are hiring a Partner Director to shape and execute OpenAI’s AWS alliance partnership in Japan. This person will own the direct relationship with AWS Japan while mobilizing AWS Japan field teams and the broader services-partner ecosystem around high-value customer opportunities. This is a hands-on individual-contributor role operating through influence in Japan. You will work alongside OpenAI’s Japan Partner Director to develop Japan GTM strategies, drive joint account planning, coordinate AWS-related opportunities, and operationally manage selected cross-functional initiatives. You will build and own the Japan GTM strategy with AWS, translating the alliance into repeatable OpenAI and AWS solutions, field playbooks, governance structures, and co-sell motions that can be adopted across Japan’s customer segments and GTM teams. The right candidate combines alliance leadership with a builder’s mindset and the ability to move comfortably between executive engagement and detailed execution. In this role, you will: - Jointly shape and execute the Japan AWS alliance strategy and annual operating plan with the Japan Partnerships Lead and Japan GTM leaders. - Own the AWS Japan alliance relationship and coordinate with AWS Japan field teams alongside OpenAI’s Japan Partner Director. - Build trusted relationships with AWS alliance leaders, sales teams, technical teams, cloud architects, industry leaders, and delivery stakeholders. - Develop joint account plans and drive co-sell execution across AWS Japan, OpenAI’s Japan Partner Director, OpenAI Sales teams, and services partners. - Identify, shape, and accelerate qualified AWS-related opportunities and customer engagements. - Mobilize AWS-focused practices within systems integrators, consulting firms, and specialist services partners. - Help partners develop repeatable OpenAI offerings, reference architectures, delivery methodologies, and GTM motions aligned with AWS infrastructure and services. - Drive operating discipline across AWS ACE, Marketplace, partner programs, funding mechanisms, pipeline tracking, partner attribution, and deal-progression workflows. - Build and run the AWS governance model in Japan, including pipeline reviews, operating cadences, executive business reviews, milestone tracking, and escalation management. - Develop scalable sales plays, enablement materials, field communications, and engagement strategies that Japan GTM teams and partners can reuse. - Lead or support contracting where appropriate, coordinating with OpenAI’s Japan Partner Director and legal, finance, and leadership teams. - Aggregate feedback from AWS stakeholders, services partners, customers, and OpenAI Japan GTM teams and translate it into recommendations for Product, Operations, Marketing, and GTM leadership. - Coordinate with Marketing on AWS-related launches, campaigns, enablement activities, and events. - Represent OpenAI with executive presence in AWS, partner, customer, and market-facing conversations. - Travel regularly within Japan, with occasional travel to the United States. Qualifications: - Direct AWS alliance experience required. - Detailed knowledge of APN onboarding, ACE, AWS Marketplace, funding models, and AWS co-sell workflows required. - 8+ years of experience in partnerships, cloud alliances, ecosystem sales, business development, consulting partnerships, or related GTM roles within SaaS, cloud, AI, or platform businesses. - Significant experience building and scaling hyperscaler-alliance motions in Japan. - Established relationships across the AWS Japan alliance, sales, and technical organizations. - Experience working with global and regional systems integrators and consulting firms with substantial AWS cloud practices. - A proven record of driving measurable partner-sourced opportunities, customer wins, and repeatable solutions through strategic partnerships. - Experience supporting complex enterprise opportunities involving cloud modernization, AI transformation, data platforms, or large-scale technical implementations. - Experience leading joint account planning and complex co-sell motions involving multiple internal and external stakeholders. - Comfort engaging C-Suite, cloud leaders, practice heads, and senior business stakeholders in commercially and technically informed conversations. - Experience building scalable partner programs, operating cadences, enablement strategies, sales plays, and field motions. - Strong technical fluency and cloud credibility, with enough depth to engage productively with architects, delivery teams, and technical decision-makers. - Strong commercial judgement and experience leading or supporting contracting processes. - Experience navigating highly matrixed organizations and aligning stakeholders without formal authority. - A demonstrated ability to operate with high ownership in ambiguous, fast-moving environments. You might thrive in this role if you: - Are a builder who enjoys creating structure and turning Japan’s partner ecosystem into repeatable motions. - Combine a sales mindset with a focus on customer delivery and measurable outcomes. - Build trust quickly with partners and executives while remaining comfortable with detailed execution. - Operate with urgency and sound judgement, focusing deeply where partnership leverage is highest. - Enjoy technical learning and can translate cloud and AI concepts into business value. - Are excited by AI, cloud transformation, and the opportunity to define how OpenAI scales through AWS and strategic services partners in Japan. 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 https://cdn.openai.com/policies/eeo-policy-statement.pdf. 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. 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