Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. We expect to move quickly with a hiring decision made over the next few weeks. 

Location: Washington, D.C. (in-person role requiring regular Hill and agency presence)

Reports to: Federal Policy Director

Status: Full-time

Compensation: Offers expected to fall between $108,000 - $193,000, depending on experience and other factors, plus competitive benefits 

About the Recoding America Fund

The Recoding America Fund (RAF) is a new, bipartisan hybrid 501(c)(3)/501(c)(4) initiative to strengthen America by building the federal and state governments we need to compete globally and serve citizens effectively. RAF aims to restore the core capabilities of government and move to a new operating model—the right people, doing the right work, with purpose-fit systems and test-and-learn frameworks—so it can reliably deliver on its goals. The Fund seeks to help accelerate the growth and development of an ideologically diverse field of state capacity organizations, connect them to each other, fill in the gaps, and help them set ambitious common goals to drive transformational change across all levels of government in this time of unprecedented disruption. Change is coming to public institutions, and now is the time to shape that change in the public interest. That ambitious task cannot be the work of just one party or faction.

The Opportunity

The state capacity field has produced strong policy ideas on civil service, procedure, digital, and oversight and accountability. What the field broadly lacks is the political and advocacy infrastructure to turn those ideas into reform. This gap is urgent. The current environment—driven by ongoing government management reforms, public frustration with government performance, and technological advancements—has created an unprecedented bipartisan openness to structural reform. 

The field employs only a few government affairs staff focused on state capacity issues and requests for engagement exceed the ability to respond. There is a narrow window to build relationships with policymakers and socialize its policy ideas to make the most of this moment. 

We are hiring a Federal Government Affairs Manager/Director to build and run the Federal state capacity government affairs function at Recoding America. This is not a traditional government affairs role. We are not building a lobbying shop for one organization's interests. We are building government affairs infrastructure for an ecosystem of organizations that share a vision for a more capable, accountable government but currently lack the collective political capacity to realize it. This role succeeds by strengthening the ecosystem's collective capacity to engage—coordinating shared resources, filling gaps no individual organization can fill, and ensuring outreach adds up to more than the sum of its parts—not by duplicating the Hill engagement that partner organizations already do well.

This is a senior role on the Federal team that owns the day-to-day management of RAF's congressional and executive branch relationships, coordinates the government affairs work across the broader state capacity ecosystem, and develops the strategic and political groundwork for targeted legislative wins in the 120th Congress and beyond. The role reports to the Federal Policy Director and works in close partnership with Recoding America’s programmatic policy staff and the government affairs teams at partner organizations.

Key Responsibilities

1. Congressional and Executive Branch Engagement

Building and managing Recoding America’s relationships with Congress and the executive branch while coordinating ecosystem engagement to ensure outreach adds up to more than the sum of its parts.

• Build and manage relationships with members and staff across both parties and chambers, with a focus on the committees and offices most relevant to the state capacity reform agenda, and with executive branch officials at agencies central to implementation. 
• Manage day-to-day engagement by scheduling meetings, preparing leadership and staff for those meetings with tailored briefing materials and talking points, drafting follow-ups, and tracking outcomes and commitments.
• Clarify messaging with programmatic policy staff and develop tailored materials and appropriate leave-behinds for Congressional and executive branch partners 

2. Ecosystem Coordination and Capacity Building

Identify ways to increase visibility and capacity across the ecosystem’s government affairs teams ensuring the field's collective Hill presence is coherent, coordinated, and growing.

• Support coordination across partner organizations’ government affairs teams by developing shared field infrastructure and by serving as a resource to partner organizations. 
• Produce coalition materials and develop processes for shared drafting of legislation, co-signing letters, and cross-ecosystem bill endorsements. 
• Identify and flag capacity and coordination gaps in the ecosystem's collective Congressional and executive branch outreach presence and determine the appropriate response
• Expand the ecosystem's overall capacity to advocate for state capacity reforms including recommendations to fund additional organizations, better leverage existing government affairs capacity, and deploying Recoding America Action’s C4 resources for time-sensitive opportunities.
• Advise on the selection and vetting of and manage relationships with lobbying firms, political strategy consultants, political advisors, and other C3 or C4 organizations engaged to fill coordination or capacity gaps.

3. Strategic Planning 

In coordination with partner organizations, develop a multi-horizon political strategy that positions the ecosystem for legislative and administrative wins in the next 2 years and beyond.

• Map potential legislative pathways for each reform priority and develop committee-specific champion strategies.
• Advise on policy development to ensure that policy ideas are tractable and socialized with the right set of stakeholders and ensure that policy development and Hill or executive branch engagement advance in parallel. 
• Identify and plan for future outreach opportunities and co-develop with programmatic staff and partner organizations a prioritized list for the 120th Congress. 

• Develop a plan for how to strategically deploy Recoding America Action’s C4 resources to fill long-term ecosystem gaps in outreach and engagement, including allocating across lobbying firms, polling and message testing, events, or sub-granting. 

4. Messaging and Political Strategy

Support the development of the political language and public narrative the field needs to build support for structural government reform across partisan lines.

• Develop political messaging and framings for state capacity reforms that resonate with both progressive and conservative audiences, grounded in the shared goal of a government that delivers results.
• Evaluate the usefulness of polling and message testing to understand what framings resonate with key constituencies, and scope and manage such efforts if warranted.
• Develop messaging that works to create a "constituency" for state capacity reforms—addressing the fundamental challenge that these issues lack natural grassroots salience and require active narrative-building to generate political support.

Who You Are and What You Bring

• You know the Hill. You have spent meaningful time working in Congress or in a role that required sustained, direct engagement with members and staff and you understand how legislation actually moves. You know the difference between a member who's interested and a member who will act. You know how to access information, identify the right staff-level entry point, and build the kind of trust that produces results over time. You have relationships you can activate and the instincts to build new ones.
• You understand the substance, not just the politics. You can engage credibly with Hill staff on the policy areas that matter to this work—civil service, procedure, digital, and oversight and accountability. You don't need to be an expert in all of them, but you need enough substantive fluency to be taken seriously in conversations about what the reforms are, why they matter, and how they would work.
• You’re a field builder. Your instinct is to build the field's capacity to act—coordinating across organizations, steering resources to the right places, filling gaps—rather than to build an internal function that does all of the work. You're comfortable leading on projects without seeking credit, and you measure success by the ecosystem's progress, not Recoding America’s visibility. You understand that the organizations working on these issues have their own strategies, relationships, and constraints, and that effective coordination requires genuine partnership.
• You see the political landscape clearly. You can assess which reforms are politically viable, which need more groundwork, and which need a different vehicle or a different Congress. You understand timing and you know how to identify and build relationships with champions.
• You build with sustainability in mind. Recoding America has a six-year horizon. Everything we build will need to be transitioned elsewhere in the ecosystem for long term sustainability. You invest in the ecosystem’s government affairs capacity rather than creating dependency on Recoding America and you build shared infrastructure that the field can own and maintain after Recoding America’s involvement ends.
• You are credible and effective across the political spectrum. The structural reforms we pursue are about making government work, not about ideology. You build genuine relationships across the political spectrum because you focus on results. 
• You bridge the political and the programmatic. You don't just take finished policy products to the Hill, you help shape what gets built by bringing political intelligence back to the ecosystem’s policy teams. You push programmatic colleagues on what the Hill needs before something is ready for a conversation, and you incorporate their expertise into how you frame and sequence engagement. You understand that the government affairs function and the programmatic function are two sides of the same coin.

We encourage anyone interested in this role to apply, regardless of whether you meet 100% of the qualifications listed. The strongest candidates will bring their own unique perspectives, experiences, and backgrounds from a variety of sectors and vantage points. We especially encourage candidates who would bring ideological diversity to the team and ecosystem to apply.

What RAF Offers

• Automatic 3% employer contribution to a 401k, fully vested immediately
• Flexible Time Off
• Time off for federal holidays plus an end-of-year office closure from Dec 24 through Jan 1st
• 100% contribution to employee premiums for medical, dental, and vision. 50% contribution to premiums for dependents
• Access to pre-tax accounts if you choose, including Healthcare FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and Commuter Benefits

Next Steps and Start Date

We’ve started reviewing applications and will interview high-potential candidates on a rolling basis, so we encourage submissions as soon as possible. We will leave the position open for as long as we need to to find the right person. We are targeting a start date in mid-June. 

Reasonable Accommodations

We are committed to fostering an inclusive and accessible work environment. If you require accommodations during the application or interview process, or to perform the essential functions of this role, please email us at [email protected] with the subject line “Accommodation Needed.” We will work with you to ensure your needs are met.

Equal Opportunity

Recoding America Fund is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants are considered for employment without regard to the person's race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.