[Hiring] Defense Customer Success Lead @Sofar Ocean

Role Description

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
• 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.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in U.S. federal business development, capture management, government affairs, strategic partnerships, federal acquisition, or a related field.
• 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.
• A note on applying: We mean it when we say we want the strongest people — not the most credentialed ones. If you're excited about this work but don't check every box, please apply anyway.

Research consistently shows that underrepresented candidates are more likely to self-select out, and that's a loss for everyone. Sofar operates at the intersection of ocean science, climate, and technology — the problems we're solving are consequential, and the perspectives we bring to them matter. We're actively working to build a team that reflects that.