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Sofar Ocean designs, builds, and deploys the world's largest privately owned network of marine sensors, combining oceanographic and underwater acoustic sensing to deliver marine weather forecasts and maritime domain awareness. The company serves commercial customers seeking efficiency and emissions reduction, as well as governments and defense stakeholders needing tools to understand extreme weather, ocean conditions, and underwater acoustic activity.
As U.S. Federal Growth Lead, you will lead cross-cutting activities to identify, shape, capture, and win strategic opportunities across the U.S. federal government, spanning defense and civilian agencies with emphasis on maritime operations, environmental intelligence, weather and ocean data, and national security missions. You will own business development, capture management, government affairs, and strategic partnerships focused on U.S. federal and defense revenue.
Key responsibilities include: developing and executing capture strategies for high-priority U.S. federal opportunities from early qualification through proposal development, award, and contract execution; providing leadership with decision-ready assessments of pipeline health, capture progress, partner activity, and government-affairs priorities; representing Sofar at customer meetings, industry events, partner discussions, and federal-market engagements; leading U.S. federal government-affairs execution in coordination with external advisors; partnering on capture materials, white papers, RFI responses, statements of work, proposals, and presentations; building and managing relationships with prime contractors and strategic partners; and collaborating across sales, product, engineering, legal, finance, marketing, operations, and leadership to ensure pursuits are both compelling and executable.
You are a determined, highly organized operator comfortable shifting between strategy and execution—briefing executives on capture decisions, developing teaming approaches, reviewing agency budgets, preparing for congressional meetings, and driving follow-up actions. You understand that federal growth requires aligning users, program offices, acquisition communities, funding sources, policymakers, partners, internal stakeholders, and contracting mechanisms. You communicate clearly, exercise sound judgment, and consistently close loops. You are motivated by mission impact and excited about using novel ocean, weather, sensing, and decision-support technologies to improve maritime awareness, operational effectiveness, safety, environmental intelligence, and national security.
REQUIREMENTS:
- 5+ years of experience in U.S. federal business development, capture management, government affairs, strategic partnerships, federal acquisition, or related field, with 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 ability to establish milestones, assign owners, surface risks, and maintain momentum across complex pursuits
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including 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 hold a Secret or higher level U.S. government security clearance
BONUS: Active SECRET or TS/SCI clearance; direct experience supporting maritime, ocean, weather, environmental, autonomy, sensing, data, or decision-support programs; experience at a fast-paced defense/fedtech company; experience with 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.
