Public Sector Sales Lead

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.

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

Responsabilités

• Définir et porter la stratégie de mise sur le marché d'Anthropic pour le secteur public en France : nos premiers terrains d'action, nos leviers de succès et ce qu'il nous faut construire pour y parvenir
• Incarner Anthropic au plus haut niveau auprès de l'État français, en nouant des relations de confiance avec les cabinets ministériels, les cadres dirigeants de l'administration et les responsables du numérique et de la technologie des plus grands ministères, dont la défense, les finances et la justice
• Piloter l'intégralité du cycle de vente sur nos premières opportunités stratégiques dans le secteur public, du premier contact au choix de la voie de passation, jusqu'à la signature, au déploiement et à l'extension
• Travailler avec les équipes Partenariats, Juridique et Finance pour mettre en place les voies d'accès au marché dont l'État a besoin : canaux de revente et de partenariat, accords-cadres et centrales d'achat telles que l'UGAP
• Collaborer au quotidien avec notre responsable des affaires publiques en France, pour que les démarches commerciales et politiques se renforcent mutuellement, en cohérence avec la stratégie et la réglementation française et européenne en matière d'IA
• Mener les échanges clients sur la souveraineté des données, la sécurité et la conformité (par exemple SecNumCloud et la doctrine « cloud au centre »), et travailler avec les équipes Sécurité, Juridique et Produit sur la façon dont nous répondons à ces exigences
• Démontrer la valeur auprès des clients en vous appuyant sur une expertise d'architecture Applied AI mutualisée, sur les fournisseurs cloud et sur les intégrateurs, en réalisant vous-même une grande part du travail de terrain dans les premiers temps
• Apprendre de nos équipes secteur public au Royaume-Uni et aux États-Unis et contribuer à leur travail, en important en France ce qui fonctionne et en partageant vos enseignements
• Créer les playbooks, les références clients et le rythme opérationnel qui nous permettront de faire grandir une équipe secteur public en France

You may be a good fit if you have

• 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