Head of U.S. Federal Growth

Sofar Ocean; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 170,000 - 250,000; Full time

Job summary

Sofar Ocean in San Francisco seeks a U.S. Federal Growth Lead to drive capture, growth, and execution across the U.S.

federal market, with emphasis on maritime operations, environmental intelligence, and national security missions. You will own cross-functional areas including business development, capture management, government affairs, and strategic partnerships, translating customer demand into actionable strategies while engaging policymakers, program offices, primes, and partners.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in U.S. federal business development, capture management, government affairs, strategic partnerships, federal acquisition, or related fields.

Responsibilities

• Develop capture strategies for Sofar’s highest-priority U.S. federal opportunities across defense and civilian agencies.
• Lead Sofar’s U.S. federal government-affairs execution in coordination with external advisors.
• Represent Sofar at customer meetings, industry events, and partner discussions in federal-market engagements.
• Partner with the government programs team on capture materials, white papers, and proposals.

Skills

Federal business development

Capture management

Government affairs

Strategic partnerships

Federal acquisition

Job description

The Company

Sofar is on a mission to connect the world's oceans.

We design, build, and deploy the largest privately owned network of marine sensors, combining oceanographic and underwater acoustic sensing to deliver the world's best marine weather forecasts and maritime domain awareness. Our data helps commercial customers increase efficiency and reduce emissions, while giving governments and defense stakeholders the tools to understand extreme weather, ocean conditions, and underwater acoustic activity in remote environments.

We live on Planet Ocean, and our goal is to create the ocean intelligence needed to ensure a sustainable and secure future.

The Role

As U.S. Federal Growth Lead, you will lead the cross-cutting activities that help Sofar identify, shape, capture, and win strategic opportunities across the U.S. federal government. Your portfolio will span defense and civilian agencies, with particular emphasis on maritime operations, environmental intelligence, weather and ocean data, and national security missions. The scope is focused on capture, growth, and execution within the U.S. federal market.

You will own the closely connected areas that drive U.S. federal and defense revenue: business development, capture management, government affairs, and strategic partnerships. You will translate customer demand and company capabilities into actionable capture strategies; develop relationships with policymakers, program offices, contracting organizations, prime contractors, and technology partners; and create viable pathways from early customer interest to funded federal programs.

This is not a purely strategic role - you are expected to be able to get your hands dirty on customer engagements, proposals, and program execution. You will partner closely with other teams on proposal development and capture, program execution, and defense sales; and you will directly manage consultants and lobbyists. This is an integrated federal-growth position for someone who can connect mission need, stakeholder support, acquisition strategy, funding, partners, and internal execution.

The role reports to the Global Head of Government and Defense.

Impact You’ll Own

• Capture: Develop and execute capture strategies for Sofar’s highest-priority U.S. federal opportunities across defense and civilian agencies from early qualification and shaping through acquisition strategy, teaming, proposal development, award, and transition to contract execution. Work with account leads to connect near-term sales opportunities with longer-term programs, contract vehicles, appropriations, and agency acquisition strategies.

• Growth Metrics and Strategy: Provide leadership with concise, decision-ready assessments of pipeline health, capture progress, partner activity, government-affairs priorities, risks, resource needs, and recommended actions.

• Customer Engagement: Represent Sofar at customer meetings, industry events, partner discussions, exercises, demonstrations, and other federal-market engagements.

• Government Affairs: Lead Sofar’s U.S. federal government-affairs execution in coordination with external advisors.

• Proposals: Partner with the government programs team on the development of capture materials, white papers, responses to requests for information, statements of work, ROMs, proposals, presentations, and other customer-facing submissions.

• Strategic Partnerships: Build and manage relationships and teaming strategies with prime contractors and other partners that expand Sofar’s access, capabilities, and competitiveness.

• Cross-functional Collaboration: Collaborate across sales, product, engineering, legal, finance, marketing, operations, and leadership to ensure priority pursuits are both compelling to the customer and executable by Sofar.

About You

You are a determined, highly organized operator who knows how to move complex federal opportunities forward despite ambiguity. You can see the entire path from an operational need to a funded and executable contract—and identify what must happen next when that path is incomplete.

You understand that federal growth rarely comes from a single activity. Winning requires aligning the user, program office, acquisition community, funding source, policymakers, partners, internal stakeholders, and contracting mechanism. You are skilled at connecting those pieces while maintaining urgency, accountability, and attention to detail.

You are comfortable shifting between strategy and execution: briefing an executive on a capture decision, developing a teaming approach with a prime contractor, reviewing an agency budget, preparing for a congressional meeting, and driving follow-up actions after a customer engagement. You communicate clearly, exercise sound judgment, and consistently close loops.

You are also motivated by mission impact. You are excited about using novel ocean, weather, sensing, and decision-support technologies to improve maritime awareness, operational effectiveness, safety, environmental intelligence, and national security.

We are open to a range of experience levels for this role. This is an incredible growth opportunity for a hungry early-career (5+ years of experience) federal business development operative (possibly a former proposal/capture strategist , deployment strategist, or Hill staffer) who is eager to expand their impact. We also recognize and respect the experience of tenured BD professionals who have spent 10+ years navigating federal/defense acquisition and who are interested in applying their skillset to help advance an innovative ocean technology company.

• 5+ years of experience in U.S. federal business development, capture management, government affairs, strategic partnerships, federal acquisition, or a related field, including demonstrated experience advancing and winning complex U.S. federal opportunities involving multiple stakeholders, long sales cycles, and non-obvious funding or contracting pathways.

• Strong understanding of the federal acquisition lifecycle, including opportunity shaping, capture planning, proposal development, source selection, contracting mechanisms, and post-award transition.

• Ability to connect operational users, program managers, contracting officials, funders, policymakers, and industry partners around a coherent path to award.

• Working knowledge of the federal budget, authorization, and appropriations processes and how they relate to agency programs and business-development priorities.

• Strong project-management skills, with the ability to establish milestones, assign owners, surface risks, and maintain momentum across several complex pursuits.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to turn technical capabilities and customer needs into compelling, audience-appropriate narratives.

• Willingness to work directly on capture materials, partner strategies, presentations, proposals, and follow-up actions—not simply advise others.

• Willingness to travel up to 25% to meet customers, policymakers, partners, and other stakeholders.

• U.S. citizenship and previously or currently have a Secret or higher level U.S. government security clearance.

Bonus Points

• Active SECRET or TS/SCI security clearance.

• Direct experience supporting maritime, ocean, weather, environmental, autonomy, sensing, data, or decision-support programs, experience working at a fast-paced defense/fedtech company, and/or experience with the U.S. Navy, Air Force, Army, SOCOM, NOAA, or other U.S. agencies with maritime, environmental, or national-security missions.

• Experience capturing both defense and civilian-agency opportunities.

• Experience selling or preparing proposals for hardware-enabled solutions, data-as-a-service offerings, software, or integrated technical capabilities to the federal government.
  

Our Approach to AI in the Hiring Process:

At Sofar, we use AI tools in our day-to-day work, and we don't expect our hiring process to be any different. Here's how we think about it:

Applying: Write your own first draft — we want to hear your voice and understand your real experience. AI is fine for refining and polishing, not for generating your story.

Take-home assessments: Complete these on your own unless we've explicitly said otherwise. We'll always be upfront about it when AI is allowed.

Interview prep: Go for it. Use AI to research Sofar, practice your responses, and sharpen your thinking before we meet.

During interviews: This is you. We're a small team and we move fast — live conversations are how we get to know you, and we're genuinely curious how you think in real time.

A note on transparency: We're a lean People team, and we use AI to help with things like drafting job descriptions, preparing interview questions, and candidate communications. We don't use it to make hiring decisions — those are always ours.

The through line: use AI to show more of yourself, not less :)

About Working at Sofar:

Visa sponsorship: We do sponsor visas and retain an immigration lawyer to support the process. While we can't guarantee sponsorship for every role or situation, if we make you an offer, we'll make every reasonable effort to make it work.