Director of Government Relations (Aerospace)

Location: Washington, DC office; based in and working in person. U.S. Person required. Travel approximately 25% or greater.

Salary: $120K–$220K plus equity.

Company

hirify.global builds and operates full-size autonomous cargo aircraft capable of carrying two tons of payload over more than a thousand nautical miles, serving remote communities and contested logistics operations.

What you will do

• Define and lead congressional strategy across the NDAA, defense and homeland security appropriations, authorization, and oversight processes.
• Draft and advocate for authorization, report, congressional, and executive-branch language and requests that support Poseidon’s platforms.
• Engage senior executive-branch and interagency stakeholders to shape requirements, resourcing, policy, and regulatory approvals.
• Build relationships with Members of Congress, congressional staff, executive agencies, regulators, industry coalitions, trade associations, and think tanks.
• Coordinate government-relations execution with communications, legal, corporate development, engineering, growth, and business-line leadership.
• Build the government-relations function, including strategy, operating systems, cadence, external consultants, and eventually a team.

Requirements

• 7+ years of experience in national security, government relations, or the federal legislative or executive arena, including significant Capitol Hill engagement.
• Extensive defense and national security experience on Capitol Hill, in the executive branch, or in a comparable defense-industry government-relations position.
• Demonstrated success influencing legislative, policy, and budget processes through NDAA and defense or homeland security appropriations outcomes.
• Deep working knowledge of PPBE, U.S. federal appropriations and authorization processes, and how requirements map to funding lines, schedules, and risk.
• Experience as professional staff on HASC, SASC, HAC-D, or SAC-D, service for a senior appropriator, or current in-house government-relations experience at a defense technology company.
• Ability to build coalitions and maintain relationships with congressional, executive-branch, industry, and trade-association stakeholders.
• Willingness to register as an individual lobbyist under the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995.
• U.S. Person status, a bachelor’s degree, and in-person work from the Washington, DC office are required.

Nice to have

• Active or eligible TS/SCI clearance.
• Established bipartisan relationships across the Armed Services and Appropriations committees, senior executive-branch stakeholders, and combatant commands.
• Experience building a government-relations function from scratch.
• Fluency in defense acquisition and aerospace and autonomy policy levers, including export control.
• Advanced degree.

Culture & Benefits

• Early-stage equity and competitive salary.
• Relocation support if applicable.
• Employee health benefit plans and 6% retirement matching.
• Flexible PTO.
• Free lunches, snacks, stocked office refrigerators, and AI tools and subscriptions.