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About This Role
Description:
The Vice President of Government Affairs serves as a member of the Hotline’s Executive Leadership Team and reports to the Chief Executive Officer. Working with the CEO, this position is responsible for leading efforts to adopt and/or reauthorize laws, policies and regulations to broadly enhance safety and economic empowerment for victims and survivors; advocates for funding to support The Hotline’s core services as well as the larger domestic violence network; collaborates with governmental, non-profit and corporate stakeholders to increase awareness and support of domestic violence. This position develops and leads opportunities to engage Hotline supporters, stakeholders and members of the public wanting to take action to support survivors and our policy efforts. This role supervises the Director of Government Affairs.
Essential Responsibilities & Duties
- Leads efforts to increase Congress’ and the Administration’s commitment to and investment in ending domestic violence.
- Collaborates with The Hotline’s Executive Leadership Team in developing, establishing, implementing, and evaluating The Hotline’s policy agenda.
- Works with the CEO to engage and inform The Hotline’s policy committee and full board in developing and executing The Hotline’s policy agenda.
- Lead and coordinate external lobbying consultants across multiple jurisdictions, fostering collaboration and alignment to ensure cohesive messaging and maximize advocacy effectiveness
- Builds and maintains strong relationships with relevant Congressional Committees, Members of Congress and staffers, as well as with related federal administrative agencies, policymakers and personnel, and other national policy leaders.
- Identify and develop strategic partnerships with organizations working in adjacent fields to build cross-sector collaboration that advance The Hotline's mission and expand policy influence
- Cultivate and maintain strong collaborative relationships with national domestic violence and sexual assault organizations to ensure coordinated policy efforts and unified messaging on shared priorities
- Monitor legislative, regulatory, procurement and budgetary process and anticipate needs of The Hotline.
- Monitor, analyze, and respond to emerging policy developments that could impact The Hotline's operations, including regulations related to artificial intelligence, data privacy, telecommunications, and technology platforms
- Promotes passage and reauthorization of strong domestic violence laws to enhance victim empowerment, safety and economic security, as well as oppose or amends legislation, policies and practices that may be harmful to survivors, ensuring The Hotline’s positions are voiced in legislative conversation and process.
- Provides timely information, fact sheets, testimony, letters and other communications to Congress and the Administration, as well as to our members, and helps to raise awareness of policy issues.
- Participates in fundraising and proposal writing projects related to policy initiatives.
- Collaborates with The Hotline’s Executive Leadership Team, in evaluating and developing strategies to address emerging critical issues.
- Ensures that the organization and its missions, programs, services and staff are consistently presented in a strong, positive image.
- Serve as a spokesperson for The Hotline in the media, at relevant policy events, on panel discussions, and in other engagements as needed.
- Ensures the alignment of resources to fulfill agency objectives.
- Other projects and responsibilities may be added and/or changed at the discretion of the Chief Executive Officer.
Requirements:
Education & Experience Required
- 8 years’ experience working in policy and government affairs for not-for-profit organizations.
- Bachelor’ degree in Social Services, Human Services or Business Administration or related field or equivalent combination of education and experience.
- Knowledge of domestic violence issues and circumstances faced by those experiencing domestic violence.
Knowledge Skills and Abilities
- Effective communication skills (written and in person) to act as spokesperson for The Hotline to convey its mission to board, staff, funders, policy makers, and constituents.
- Inspiring, collaborative, courageous, innovative, and visionary leader with outstanding people and management skills.
- Strong team building and leadership skills to effectively manage The Hotline’s activities through vision, strategic planning and expertise.
- Exceptional interpersonal skills to elicit commitment to and advancement of The Hotline’s mission and vision both internally and externally.
- Critical analytical skills to understand the social, financial and external issues affecting service providers; to foresee and interpret trends and the dynamic changing needs of The Hotline’s partners and constituents and to develop process and resources to respond effectively and in a timely manner.
- Knowledge and understanding of the national legislative agenda process and key players.
- Demonstrated ability to multi-task and work under tight and/or changing timelines; disciplined leadership and time management skills to coordinate and prioritize own and others’ activities, evaluate progress and provide feedback; and to reallocate resources to complete activities within set deadlines.
- Ability to engage with staff and leadership to promote trust, collaboration, and partnership between departments and levels of leadership.
Other Requirements/Working Conditions
- This role is based in Washington, DC.
- Must have a home workspace that is confidential, secure and free from distraction.
- Must maintain a stable internet connection with at least 10 MBPS download and 2 MBPS upload speeds.
- Some travel is required.
- Must maintain standards of confidentiality related to agency information.
- Prolonged sitting or standing using keyboard, phone, and computer
The Hotline’s full-time employees are eligible for a comprehensive benefits package designed to support their health, financial security, and overall well-being. Benefits include:
Health & Insurance Benefits
- 100% employer-paid medical plan option
- Dental and vision insurance plans
- Health Savings Account (HSA)
- Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) for medical and dependent care
- Employer-paid short-term and long-term disability insurance
- Employer-paid life and accidental death & dismemberment (AD&D) insurance ($50,000 coverage)
- Aflac supplemental insurance plans
Retirement & Financial Planning
- 401(k) retirement plan with employer match
Work-Life Balance and Additional Perks
- 10 days of paid vacation in your first year (increases with tenure)
- 14 floating holidays per year
- Paid sick leave and paid parental leave
- Modern Health, a mental health platform that provides confidential, on-demand support for your mental well-being through individual and group sessions, mediations and other wellness tools.
- Access to Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
- Nectar Rewards, a peer-to-peer employee recognition and rewards platform that helps teams celebrate wins, reinforce company values, and boost engagement.
- Employee referral program
- Discounted Gold’s Gym membership
This description only includes essential functions of the job. These statements are not intended to be construed as exhaustive of all duties, responsibilities, and skills required for this position. Employees will be required to follow and any other job-related instruction and to perform any other job-related duties required by the job objectives, supervisor, and mission and values of The Hotline. This description does not modify any employee’s at-will status and is not a contract for continued employment of any duration.
The National Domestic Violence Hotline is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, disability, veteran status, or any other legally protected status. Discrimination or harassment of any kind is not aligned with our values and will not be tolerated. If you need accommodation during the application or interview process, please contact us at jobs@thehotline.org.
Role Details
About This Role
AI/ML Engineers build and deploy machine learning models in production. They work across the full ML lifecycle: data pipelines, model training, evaluation, and serving infrastructure. The role has evolved significantly over the past two years. Where ML Engineers once spent most of their time on model architecture, the job now tilts heavily toward inference optimization, cost management, and integrating LLM capabilities into existing systems. Companies want engineers who can ship production systems, and the experimenter-only role is fading fast.
Day-to-day, you're writing training pipelines, debugging data quality issues, setting up evaluation frameworks, and figuring out why your model performs differently in staging than it did on your dev set. The best ML engineers are obsessive about reproducibility and measurement. They instrument everything. They know that a model is only as good as the data feeding it and the infrastructure serving it.
Across the 37,339 AI roles we're tracking, AI/ML Engineer positions make up 91% of the market. At National Domestic Violence Hotline, this role fits into their broader AI and engineering organization.
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
What the Work Looks Like
A typical week might include: debugging a data pipeline that's silently dropping 3% of training examples, running A/B tests on a new model version, writing documentation for a feature flag system that lets you roll back model deployments, and reviewing a junior engineer's PR for a new evaluation metric. Meetings tend to be cross-functional since ML touches product, engineering, and data teams.
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
Skills Required
Python and PyTorch dominate the requirements. Most roles expect experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and familiarity with ML frameworks like TensorFlow or JAX. RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) has become a top-3 skill requirement as companies integrate LLMs into their products. Docker and Kubernetes show up in about a third of postings, reflecting the production focus of the role.
Beyond the core stack, employers increasingly want experience with experiment tracking tools (MLflow, Weights & Biases), feature stores, and vector databases. Fine-tuning experience is valuable but less common than you'd think from reading Twitter. Most production LLM work is RAG and prompt engineering, not fine-tuning. If you have both, you're in a strong position.
Companies that are serious about AI/ML hiring tend to post specific infrastructure details in the job description: the frameworks they use, their model serving stack, their data pipeline tools. Vague postings that just say 'ML experience required' without specifics are often companies that haven't figured out what they need yet.
Compensation Benchmarks
AI/ML Engineer roles pay a median of $154,000 based on 8,743 positions with disclosed compensation.
Across all AI roles, the market median is $190,000. Top-quartile compensation starts at $244,000. The 90th percentile reaches $300,688. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Engineering Manager ($293,500) and AI Safety ($274,200). By seniority level: Entry: $85,000; Mid: $147,000; Senior: $225,000; Director: $230,600; VP: $248,357.
National Domestic Violence Hotline AI Hiring
National Domestic Violence Hotline has 1 open AI role right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer. Based in Washington, DC, US.
Location Context
Across all AI roles, 7% (2,732 positions) offer remote work, while 34,484 require on-site attendance. Top AI hiring metros: New York (1,633 roles, $204,100 median); Los Angeles (1,356 roles, $179,440 median); San Francisco (1,230 roles, $240,000 median).
Career Path
Common paths into AI/ML Engineer roles include Data Scientist, Software Engineer, Research Engineer.
From here, career progression typically leads toward ML Architect, AI Engineering Manager, Principal ML Engineer.
The fastest path into ML engineering is through software engineering with a self-directed ML education. A CS degree helps, but production engineering skills matter more than academic credentials. Build something that works, deploy it, and measure it. That portfolio project is worth more than a Coursera certificate. For career growth, the fork comes around the senior level: go deep on technical complexity (staff/principal track) or move into managing ML teams.
What to Expect in Interviews
Expect system design questions around ML pipelines: how you'd build a training pipeline for a specific use case, handle data drift, or design A/B testing infrastructure for model deployments. Coding rounds typically involve Python, with emphasis on data manipulation (pandas, numpy) and algorithm implementation. Take-home assignments often ask you to build an end-to-end ML pipeline from raw data to deployed model.
When evaluating opportunities: Companies that are serious about AI/ML hiring tend to post specific infrastructure details in the job description: the frameworks they use, their model serving stack, their data pipeline tools. Vague postings that just say 'ML experience required' without specifics are often companies that haven't figured out what they need yet.
AI Hiring Overview
The AI job market has 37,339 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 3,672 entry-level, 23,272 mid-level, 7,048 senior, and 3,347 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 7% of the market (2,732 positions). The remaining 34,484 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.
The market median for AI roles is $190,000. Top-quartile compensation starts at $244,000. The 90th percentile reaches $300,688. Highest-paying categories: AI Engineering Manager ($293,500 median, 21 roles); AI Safety ($274,200 median, 24 roles); Research Engineer ($260,000 median, 264 roles).
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
The AI Job Market Today
The AI job market spans 37,339 open positions across 15 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (33,926), AI Software Engineer (823), AI Product Manager (805). These three account for the majority of open positions, though smaller categories often have higher per-role compensation because of specialized skill requirements.
The seniority mix tells a story about where AI teams are in their maturity. Entry-level roles (3,672) are outnumbered by mid-level (23,272) and senior (7,048) positions, reflecting that most companies are past the 'build a team from scratch' phase and need experienced engineers who can ship production systems. Leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level) total 3,347 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.
Remote work availability sits at 7% of all AI roles (2,732 positions), with 34,484 requiring on-site or hybrid attendance. The remote share has stabilized after the post-pandemic correction. Senior and specialized roles (Research Scientist, ML Architect) are more likely to be remote-eligible than entry-level positions, partly because experienced hires have more negotiating power and partly because these roles require less hands-on mentorship.
AI compensation is structured in clear tiers. The market median sits at $190,000. Top-quartile roles start at $244,000, and the 90th percentile reaches $300,688. These figures include base salary with disclosed compensation. Total compensation (including equity, bonuses, and sign-on) runs 20-40% higher at companies that offer those components.
Category matters for compensation. AI Engineering Manager roles lead at $293,500 median, while Prompt Engineer roles sit at $145,600. The spread between highest and lowest-paying categories reflects the premium on specialized technical skills versus broader analytical roles.
The most in-demand skills across all AI postings: Rag (23,721 postings), Aws (12,486 postings), Rust (10,785 postings), Python (5,564 postings), Azure (3,616 postings), Gcp (3,032 postings), Prompt Engineering (2,112 postings), Kubernetes (1,713 postings). Python dominates, appearing in the vast majority of role descriptions regardless of category. Cloud platform experience (AWS, GCP, Azure) is the second most common requirement. The newer entrants to the top skills list (RAG, vector databases, LLM APIs) reflect the shift from traditional ML toward generative AI applications.
Frequently Asked Questions
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