Director of Agricultural Development

What You'll Do

• USDA Engagement: Own Rainmaker’s relationship with USDA end to end, specifically NRCS at the national headquarters, regional, and local office levels, along with FSA, RMA, ARS, ERS, and NIFA. Build durable relationships with senior career and political leadership, and understand where decision authority actually sits between Washington and the states.
• Conservation Program Development: Identify and secure the USDA vehicles that can fund precipitation enhancement as a conservation practice. Own proposal development, submission, and follow-through, and pursue the longer-horizon work of establishing cloud seeding within USDA’s conservation practice architecture.
• Farm Bill & Legislative Strategy: Own Rainmaker’s Farm Bill strategy. Track and shape the conservation and research titles, develop legislative proposals and appropriations language, and understand how authorization interacts with the annual Agriculture appropriations process. 
• Congressional Engagement: Own relationships with the House and Senate Agriculture Committees, the Agriculture appropriations subcommittees, and the Western delegations whose districts our projects serve. Prepare member- and staff-level briefing materials that make the case for precipitation enhancement as agricultural water supply.
• State & Federal Alignment: Work in close partnership with Rainmaker’s State Government Affairs team, who own our relationships with state water agencies, districts, and basin bodies. Understand what each state and basin is working toward, then find the federal authorities, funding, and relationships that advance it.
• Agricultural Coalition Building: Represent Rainmaker across Washington’s agricultural community. Identify positive-sum opportunities on water policy, and convert it into shared advocacy.
• Regional & Producer-Facing Work: Build relationships with state conservationists, state technical committees, extension services, and producer groups in the regions where we operate. Translate what producers need into terms federal program managers can act on, and translate federal program mechanics into terms producers can use.
• Field Demonstrations & Site Visits: Organize visits for USDA leadership, Congressional staff, state officials, and agricultural stakeholders, building first-hand understanding of what the technology does and where it fits in a working agricultural water system.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in agricultural policy, conservation policy, or agricultural government relations. Examples include time at USDA, a Congressional agriculture or agriculture appropriations role, a commodity or producer organization, a conservation NGO, or the government affairs function of a comparable company.

• Thorough working knowledge of how USDA operates at both the national and state/regional level, including the relationship between headquarters policy and state office implementation.

• In-depth command of USDA conservation and water programs, and how producers actually access them.

• Demonstrated command of the Farm Bill: how it is written, reauthorized, and funded, and how the conservation and research titles interact with annual appropriations.

• Track record of developing programs and securing federal funding for them, including familiarity with the mechanics of federal grant, cooperative agreement, and cost-share processes.

• Current relationships across USDA, the Congressional agriculture committees, and the Washington agricultural community.

• Substantive understanding of western water policy and the agricultural water landscape.

• Ability to operate as both a strategist and a hands-on operator in a fast-paced startup environment.

• Direct agricultural or ranching background is a bonus.

• Must be based in Washington, DC with willingness and ability to travel domestically for Hill engagement, agency meetings, state and regional office visits, coalition work, and project site demonstrations.