Government Openings Jobs in Reston, VA (NOW HIRING)

Head of Government Affairs

About the Role

Verkada is entering a transformative phase of growth in the public sector. This is our first dedicated public sector leadership hire - a foundational role responsible for personally opening doors with government stakeholders across Federal and State/Local/Education (SLED) markets, shaping the policy and procurement environment in our favor. The role will start as an individual contributor and will have the ability to build a team in the future to scale that access into a repeatable sales motion. This position reports directly to the VP of Public Sector and is foundational in nature: there is no existing team or playbook. You will build both, starting with your own relationships and credibility, and are expected to be the ultimate door opener for Verkada in government.

What You'll Do

• Relationship Building: Personally build and maintain senior relationships across priority Federal and SLED targets, serving as Verkada's principal point of contact with government decision-makers, especially in year one.
• Policy & Procurement Influence: Directly shape policy and procurement conversations in Verkada's favor - including advocating for funding and appropriations, such as school safety grants, that favor modern, cloud-based public sector infrastructure.
• Strategy Development: Develop the government sales playbook based on real, on-the-ground experience rather than theory, translating your personal network and knowledge into a strategy a growing team can execute.
• Partner & Vendor Management: Identify and engage external partners - lobbyists, consultants, and procurement specialists - to accelerate specific priority pursuits.
• Deal Support: Partner directly with Sales to unlock procurement pathways, navigate agency-specific requirements, and support account-level strategy on active pursuits, owning time-to-close as a core performance metric.
• Policy Monitoring: Track legislative and regulatory developments relevant to Verkada's roadmap - including AI governance, data privacy (CCPA/GDPR), and data security programs such as FedRAMP and state equivalents - and flag implications to Legal and Product.
• Compliance: Partner with Legal to ensure all government-facing activity meets the highest standards of ethics and disclosure.
• Team Building: This role begins as an individual contributor. You'll personally do the hands-on work of opening doors and building early traction before any team is in place. As the function proves out, you'll hire and structure a team covering Civilian, DoW/DoD, Federal broadly, and State & Local, so the coverage doesn't depend on you being in every room forever.

What You Bring

• Relationship Access: A proven door opener with real, personal senior-level relationships across government - this is the single most important qualification; strategy and process can be built around this, but it cannot be taught quickly.
• Policy & Procurement Experience: Direct experience shaping policy or procurement outcomes in favor of a company or product, not just monitoring or tracking legislation.
• Industry Background: A background in enterprise technology or SaaS selling into government - cloud, cybersecurity, or platform software strongly preferred. A physical security industry background is explicitly not required, as we are prioritizing government relationship depth and technology sales fluency over category-specific product knowledge, which we will teach.
• Sector Range: Experience in both Federal and SLED markets, or a clear, credible plan for how you'd build the side you know less well.
• Team Building: A demonstrated ability to build and lead a team, so prior people-management and hiring experience is essential, not optional.
• Operating Style: Comfort operating as an individual contributor and relationship-builder in the first year of the role, transitioning to a strategic team leader after you prove out the function.
• Evaluation Note: Given how specific this combination of skills is, we will weigh personal relationship access and technology-sector government sales experience most heavily, with physical security or defense-industrial-only backgrounds considered a weaker fit for this particular seat - even where other qualifications are strong.

US Employee Benefits

Verkada is committed to fostering a workplace environment that prioritizes the holistic health and wellbeing of our employees and their families by offering comprehensive wellness perks, benefits, and resources. Our benefits and perks programs include, but are not limited to:

• Healthcare programs that can be tailored to meet the personal health and financial well-being needs - Premiums are 100% covered for the employee under at least one plan and 80% for family premiums under all plans
• Nationwide medical, vision and dental coverage
• Health Savings Account (HSA) with annual employer contributions and Flexible Spending Account (FSA) with tax saving options
• Expanded mental health support
• Paid parental leave policy & fertility benefits
• Time off to relax and recharge through our paid holidays, firmwide extended holidays, flexible PTO and personal sick time
• Professional development stipend
• Wellness/fitness benefits
• Healthy lunches provided daily
• Commuter benefits

• You must be independently authorized to work in the U.S. We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment visa for this role, at this time