Defense Customer Success Lead

Sofar Ocean•San Francisco, CA

10d•$140,000 - $170,000

About The Position

Sofar is seeking a U.S. Federal Growth Lead to spearhead activities that identify, shape, capture, and win strategic opportunities within the U.S. federal government. This role will focus on defense and civilian agencies, with a particular emphasis on maritime operations, environmental intelligence, weather and ocean data, and national security missions. The scope is centered on capture, growth, and execution within the U.S. federal market. The lead will be responsible for business development, capture management, government affairs, and strategic partnerships, translating customer demand and company capabilities into actionable capture strategies. This role involves developing relationships with policymakers, program offices, contracting organizations, prime contractors, and technology partners, and creating pathways from initial customer interest to funded federal programs. The position requires a hands-on approach, involving customer engagements, proposals, and program execution, in close partnership with other teams. The role reports to the Global Head of Government and Defense.

Requirements

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.

Nice To Haves

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.
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.

Responsibilities

Develop and execute capture strategies for high-priority U.S. federal opportunities across defense and civilian agencies, from qualification and shaping through acquisition strategy, teaming, proposal development, award, and transition to contract execution.
Connect near-term sales opportunities with longer-term programs, contract vehicles, appropriations, and agency acquisition strategies.
Provide leadership with concise, decision-ready assessments of pipeline health, capture progress, partner activity, government-affairs priorities, risks, resource needs, and recommended actions.
Represent Sofar at customer meetings, industry events, partner discussions, exercises, demonstrations, and other federal-market engagements.
Lead Sofar’s U.S. federal government-affairs execution in coordination with external advisors.
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.
Build and manage relationships and teaming strategies with prime contractors and other partners to expand Sofar’s access, capabilities, and competitiveness.
Collaborate across sales, product, engineering, legal, finance, marketing, operations, and leadership to ensure priority pursuits are compelling to the customer and executable by Sofar.