Public Sector Sales Lead

Skills this role screens for

About the role

About Anthropic

Anthropic’s mission is to create reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. We want AI to be safe and beneficial for our users and for society as a whole. Our team is a quickly growing group of committed researchers, engineers, policy experts, and business leaders working together to build beneficial AI systems.

The work

About the role

As Anthropic's Public Sector Sales Lead for France, you will be the face of Anthropic to the French State. This is a founding, zero-to-one role: there is no public sector team in France today, and you will build our strategy, our routes to market and our first strategic relationships from the ground up. Reporting to our EMEA South leadership, you will lead the adoption of safe, frontier AI across central government, starting with the largest ministries. You will work hand in hand with our Public Policy lead in Paris, because in few companies is policy as central to the mission as it is at Anthropic, and with Partnerships, Legal, Security and Product to put in place the commercial and compliance frameworks the State needs in order to work with us at scale.

This is a senior individual contributor role. We expect you to have run a public sector business and led teams, and to be energised by stepping back into a hands-on seat where you build it yourself and where the size of your team says nothing about the size of your scope. In the first year, success is measured less by a large number and more by putting Anthropic on the map with the French State: a clear strategy, the right foundations and our first strategic agreements.

The work

Responsibilities

• Define and own Anthropic's public sector go-to-market strategy for France: where we play first, how we win, and what we need to build to get there
• Be the senior face of Anthropic to the French State, building trusted relationships with ministerial cabinets, senior officials and digital and technology leaders across the largest ministries, including defence, finance and justice
• Own the full sales cycle on our first strategic public sector opportunities, from first engagement through procurement route, close, deployment and expansion
• Work with Partnerships, Legal and Finance to put in place the routes to market the State needs, including resale and partner channels, framework agreements and central purchasing bodies such as UGAP
• Partner day to day with our Public Policy lead in France so that commercial and policy engagement reinforce each other, and stay aligned with French and European AI strategy and regulation
• Lead the conversation with customers on data sovereignty, security and compliance (for example SecNumCloud and the State's cloud doctrine), and work with Security, Legal and Product on how we meet those requirements
• Prove value with customers alongside a shared Applied AI architect, cloud providers and systems integrators, doing much of the groundwork yourself in the early stages
• Learn from and contribute to our UK and US public sector teams, bringing what works to France and sharing what you learn
• Create the playbooks, references and operating rhythm that will let us scale a public sector team in France over time

Who they want

You may be a good fit if you have

À propos du poste

En tant que Responsable des ventes secteur public d'Anthropic pour la France, vous incarnerez Anthropic auprès de l'État français. Il s'agit d'un poste fondateur, à construire de zéro : il n'existe aujourd'hui aucune équipe secteur public en France, et vous bâtirez notre stratégie, nos voies d'accès au marché et nos premières relations stratégiques en partant d'une page blanche. Ce poste est rattaché à la direction EMEA Sud. Vous piloterez l'adoption d'une IA de pointe et sûre au sein de l'administration centrale, en commençant par les plus grands ministères. Vous travaillerez main dans la main avec notre responsable des affaires publiques à Paris — dans peu d'entreprises les politiques publiques sont aussi centrales à la mission que chez Anthropic — ainsi qu'avec les équipes Partenariats, Juridique, Sécurité et Produit, afin de mettre en place les cadres commerciaux et de conformité dont l'État a besoin pour travailler avec nous à grande échelle.

Il s'agit d'un poste senior de contribution individuelle. Nous attendons de vous que vous ayez dirigé une activité secteur public et encadré des équipes, et que la perspective de revenir à un poste pleinement opérationnel vous enthousiasme : un poste où vous construisez vous-même, et où la taille de votre équipe ne dit rien de l'étendue de votre périmètre. La première année, la réussite se mesurera moins à un grand chiffre qu'à votre capacité à installer Anthropic auprès de l'État français : une stratégie claire, les bonnes fondations et nos premiers accords stratégiques.…

• 15+ years in enterprise technology sales, including significant time running a public sector business unit or leading sales teams that sell to French central government
• The appetite to move from a leadership role into a hands-on senior individual contributor role with no team at the outset
• Evidence that you thrive building from zero: a new market, a new business line or an early-stage company, where systems, processes and support were not yet in place
• A track record of landing large, complex and genuinely transformative agreements with major ministries, as the person leading the deal
• A deep, senior network across central government, and the credibility to engage at director and cabinet level as well as with technical teams
• Practical command of French public procurement, including tenders, framework agreements, central purchasing bodies and partner or resale routes
• Real expertise in data sovereignty, security and compliance requirements in the French State, and experience leading those conversations with customers
• Experience of, or a clear aptitude for, working closely with public policy or government affairs colleagues
• Ownership and resilience: you treat what is missing as something to build, and you bring colleagues with you to build it
• The technical curiosity to learn our products in depth and hold credible conversations with both engineering leaders and senior officials
• Fluent French and English, with excellent written and spoken communication in both
• Willingness to go through French security clearance (habilitation) should specific accounts require it
• A genuine commitment to safe and beneficial AI, and the ability to articulate why it matters for public institutions