About the team

OpenAI’s Enterprise Go-To-Market organization helps the world’s largest companies adopt and scale our AI platform across their business—from ChatGPT Enterprise to our developer platform and APIs.

In Japan, we partner with leading organizations across Financial Services, Manufacturing, Retail, Technology, Life Sciences, and other key industries to build AI-powered customer experiences, transform operations, and accelerate innovation. As adoption accelerates through pilots, experimentation, developer-led use cases, and executive interest, the GTM team turns that momentum into durable, enterprise-wide deployments.

Sales Development sits at the front of this motion—where technical curiosity becomes executive engagement and OpenAI’s enterprise relationships begin.

About the role

We are hiring a Japan Sales Development Leader to build and lead OpenAI’s enterprise Sales Development organization in Japan. Reporting directly to the Head of Global Sales Development, this role will be a key partner to Japan and APAC GTM leadership.

This is a high-impact leadership role focused on scaling pipeline generation and market development in one of OpenAI’s most important markets. You will define how Sales Development engages enterprise customers in Japan, build and develop the local SDR organization, and create the operating model that converts product interest, developer activity, inbound demand, and targeted outbound engagement into high-quality pipeline for our Enterprise and Strategic Accounts organizations.

Success in this role requires combining global operating rigor with a deep understanding of how enterprise relationships are built in Japan. You will develop motions that reflect the nuances of the Japanese market while connecting closely with OpenAI’s broader APAC and global GTM strategy.

In this role, you will

• Build and scale OpenAI’s Japan Sales Development organization, including hiring strategy, team design, enablement, and performance management.

• Lead, coach, and develop SDRs in Japan, building a high-performing team and a strong pipeline of future GTM talent.

• Own the Japan enterprise pipeline generation strategy, ensuring consistent, high-quality opportunity creation across Enterprise and Strategic Accounts.

• Translate product usage, pilots, developer engagement, executive interest, and inbound demand into qualified enterprise opportunities.

• Develop Japan-specific and vertical-specific SDR motions that reflect local customer buying behaviors, stakeholder dynamics, and enterprise decision-making processes.

• Partner closely with Japan Sales, Marketing, Field Engineering, Partnerships, Customer Success, and Strategy & Ops to drive a coordinated GTM motion.

• Establish scalable outbound, inbound, ABM, partner-led, and product-led pipeline generation playbooks for the Japanese market.

• Build a data-driven operating cadence focused on pipeline quality, conversion, velocity, account penetration, and long-term revenue impact.

• Identify whitespace and emerging opportunities across the Japanese market and help inform account prioritization, territory planning, and GTM investment.

• Serve as a strategic partner to Japan and APAC sales leadership on how to capture and accelerate enterprise demand.

• Bring insights from customers and the market back to regional and global teams to help shape OpenAI’s broader Sales Development strategy.

You may thrive in this role if you

• Have 10+ years of experience in enterprise sales, revenue, business development, or GTM leadership.

• Bring significant experience leading SDR, business development, or pipeline generation organizations in Japan.

• Have built or scaled enterprise demand generation engines in fast-growing technology, SaaS, cloud, developer, or platform businesses.

• Have a strong understanding of enterprise selling in Japan, including how to navigate complex organizations, build senior-level relationships, and create new opportunities in strategic accounts.

• Are fluent in product-led and usage-based GTM motions, including PQLs, pilots, free-to-paid conversion, and expansion.

• Can combine proactive outbound prospecting with the relationship-driven nature of enterprise selling in Japan.

• Are highly data-driven, with strong experience in forecasting, pipeline analytics, conversion metrics, and operational rigor.

• Thrive in matrixed organizations spanning Sales, Product, Marketing, Partnerships, Engineering, and Operations.

• Are an exceptional talent builder who can attract, coach, and develop high-performing SDR talent.

• Bring strong executive presence and the ability to engage credibly with senior enterprise customers and partners.

• Are comfortable operating in a fast-moving environment where playbooks are still being built and where experimentation, judgment, and adaptability are critical.

• Are fluent in Japanese and able to operate effectively in English in a global business environment.

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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