From Government Leadership to Big Tech TPM: Insights from Ian Brelinsky
I recently hosted an "Ask Me Anything" with Ian Brelinsky to demystify a path a lot of government people are interested in: moving from federal leadership into technical program management. Ian studied electrical engineering at MIT and started his federal career as an intern in 2004. He worked across engineering roles, spent time overseas as a diplomat, and finished in technology partnerships at the GS-15 level. He then became a technical program manager at Google, working on protecting user data, before moving to OpenAI, where he founded the AI and Cybersecurity Research Program and launched Codex Security. Today he is building his own cybersecurity and AI startup focused on firmware security. He has made the leap out of government more than once, and he was wonderfully candid about the bumps along the way.
Sidenote: Ian's comments reflect his own views and experience, not those of Google, OpenAI, or the federal government.
Here is the breakdown of our conversation:
Making Your Government Experience Land with Tech Hiring Managers
Write for someone who has never heard of your agency, your program, or your job. Government runs on networks and shared context: people know you and what you've done, so applications focus on how that known work gets leveraged at a higher level. In the private sector, nobody knows your acronyms or your programs, and often not even what your role involved. Ian's example was a GS-13 finance leader. To an outsider that could be the person taking payments at the DMV or someone steering a multi-million dollar budget across organizations and working with Congress. The reader cannot tell which unless you show them.
Plain language. Explain your job the way you would to a niece or nephew. If someone has to ask you to define a term, you've gone too deep.
A framework. The STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result) helps the reader picture being dropped into your shoes. Set the stage, say what you were responsible for, and say what resulted.
Say "I." Government work is described in "we" because it is a team effort. In the private sector, "we delivered" can sound like you are taking credit for everyone else's work. Say what you led and did, then name your specific role within the team. As I told the group, you can, should, and must take credit for the work you did!
Skip the acronyms. A GS level is fine to include because it gives people an anchor. Agency-specific titles are another story. Describe what the job was in plain terms, such as engaging external parties on a regular basis and managing their portfolio to reach a goal.
A real LinkedIn presence. Many of you hate LinkedIn, and I do not think you have to post in order to find a job. You do, however, need a professional photo, plenty of connections, and a clear statement of who you are and who you have worked for. A blank or thin profile looks like a fake one, and that costs you callbacks.
Pre-publication review. In Ian's experience, reviewers check two different things: the content of your words, and whether your title and organization match the official record. His advice was to write far more than you think you need, even ten pages of raw bullet lines, because the review cares about the words and not the format. You can always trim, reorder, and reword later, and you end up with approved language you can use across resumes, LinkedIn, and interviews. Keep the official title and organization on the top line exactly as approved, and put the plain-language description of what you really did in the bullets.
Do You Have to Be an Engineer to Land a TPM Role?
No. Ian was clear that you do not need to be a world-class scientist to be a technical program manager, and that if you are one, you may be better suited to a researcher role.
How the pieces fit. Researchers invent new methods, whether that is the scientists building AI or the people designing new ways to detect threats. Engineers build the code and scaffolding around that work. Operations and program managers are the glue that gets it all done, and product managers focus on what users would actually want and buy. Within program management there are two tracks: strategy, operations, and launch on one side, and technical alignment on the other, where you work in the weeds with researchers and engineers on requirements.
What each role needs. A TPM has to understand the technical pieces well enough to help get them done. A program manager without the T needs to see the forest for the trees and work well with people. Ian said these are the skills government people most often leave off their resumes: emotional intelligence, organization, the maturity to work across organizations, the ability to hold a lot of context at once, and the humility to know you are enabling other people to build. In his words, you are the doer of last resort and the organizer of first resort.
Why government people are suited to it. I always say people from national security and foreign affairs parts of government are like water. You find a way through. In my first couple of months at OpenAI, some of the most impactful things I did were noticing that two teams were working on the same thing and putting them in touch so they could de-conflict. Emotional intelligence and connecting the pieces are the heart of these roles.
Skills, Certifications, and Where to Spend Your Time
Learn the language of the industry you want to join before you collect badges. Ian bought the Scrum and Agile books, worked through them, and did not enjoy a minute of it. Not one of his interviews asked about any of it. Nobody asked whether he knew Scrum or could build a Gantt chart. They wanted to know whether they liked him, whether he could get people to work together, and whether he was smart enough to see the forest for the trees.
Smell like the campfire. A senior leader Ian learned from used to say you have to smell like the campfire. Picture walking up to a group of cowboys who have been out working all day while smelling of fresh laundry. They do not know what to make of you. Knowing the language and the business of the industry you want to join can matter more than a PMP or other certification, and if you have every badge but cannot speak the language, you will have a hard time getting hired.
Networking builds the vocabulary. I added that talking to people is how you pick up the language. Read company websites, listen to earnings calls, and watch interviews with senior leaders, then talk to people in the field you want to enter. The more conversations you have, the easier it gets to talk the talk and walk the walk.
Culture Shock: Leave Your Level at the Door
Ian's biggest misstep when he left government service was assuming his grade and level would matter as much in tech as they did in government. In government, being at a certain level is how you show you can reach the next one. In tech, you will most likely spend two to three years at a company and then move on, so the priority is to invest in yourself and learn the business.
If you resist the idea that you have a lot to learn, it can hold you back, so Ian recommends that you treat this first position after government as a two or three year opportunity, learn everything you can, then combine it with your twenty years to land two levels higher in the next role. His words: "it works, trust me."
My additions. Most people coming out of government land a little lower than they expect. The higher you come in, the higher the expectations, and at the toughest places to land, like a frontier AI lab or Google, there is not an easy way to down-level once you're in. You live up to the level or you are shown the door. Ian and I have both watched this happen to multiple people. So give yourself some room. Ask how much money you need, how much you would like, whether the work is interesting, and whether the culture fits, then decide. As Ian put it, look longer term.
Networking with an Ask, and How Ian Landed His Roles
Ian spent about a year getting almost no traction, and what changed things was clarity about what he wanted and relationships with people who knew him. He spent months on his resume, and colleagues inside government loved it. A friend outside government looked at it and said he had no idea what Ian did. It took several rewrites to get it right.
Have an ask. Ian reached out to former colleagues now in tech and set up meetings just to connect. At the end of one, the person asked how she could help, and he had no answer. Know why you are talking to someone. The ask can be as simple as sharing your three-minute pitch and asking whether they see a role for someone like you, so you can gauge level and interest. Or it can be pointing to a new team you spotted on their jobs page and asking to be connected to the right people.
Google. His first interview loop was a stretch, about two levels above where he should have been, and he did not yet know the language, so it went badly. However, Ian did not treat that as a final no. A friend on another team who knew and trusted him put him through a TPM loop, and it felt like a completely different experience: good conversations, then an offer. I would underline that Google is known for hiring people after a few trips through the loop. A no can mean not right now.
OpenAI. A recruiter reached out to Ian cold, and he almost did not respond. I would add a caution: when someone claiming to be a recruiter contacts you, do your homework. Check that the email address matches the profile and look at how recently the profile was created. Scams are everywhere these days.
Be generous, and close the loop. Talk to everyone you can, with purpose, and use each conversation to reach more people. Offer help in return, including introductions. Then circle back and tell the people who helped you how you are doing and where you landed. It makes a real impact!
What the Job Looks Like and What Comes After
Ian's days at Google were mostly meetings, unblocking people, and a couple of heads-down hours once the East Coast signed off.
A typical day. He started at home with a couple of meetings, such as his boss, program leads, and his engineering lead. He checked the status of each piece of the project and the tickets, meaning bug reports and technical issues. Then he reached out to people to find where things were jammed and helped get them moving. After lunch came three or four hours of back-to-back meetings with the same goal. Later, with the East Coast offline, he had about two hours of heads-down time for program plans, product overview docs, and slides for executive presentations, followed by more prep for the next day.
The trade-off. He worked longer hours than he did in government, with far more flexibility: laundry between meetings, a fitness class, time to catch up with colleagues. He likes it a lot.
The next role. Ian's honest answer is that the world is your oyster, with some friction. Once your resume says things the private sector understands, you get typecast. The next TPM role is the easiest to land, and at a large tech company or frontier lab that search can shrink to about two weeks. Product management is a natural step, often with a level adjustment, since you share about 80 percent of the skill set. Strategy and operations work too. Moving into something like AI research takes more proof, though it is still easier than the first jump out of government. If you know you do not want to be a TPM, do not start there. I would add that a TPM role keeps more doors open than a narrowly scoped specialty.
Where to Begin, and Stereotypes to Retire
Start with what you want, then work down to companies, and then to people.
Where to begin. Make an inventory of what brings you joy and what you want to achieve with your days. Connect that to the mission you spent years advancing, whether that is communications that bring people together or AI capabilities reaching places like Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Build a short list of companies doing work you care about, see what roles are open, and network your way to someone there. Write your resume from your big master document, and tell someone at the company that you want to work there. An application sent into the void rarely does that job. This is the approach I teach in my workshop and class, and what MissionPivot helps guide people through.
Decision making and hierarchy in tech. Ian found government sat somewhere in the middle of a spectrum. Some tech companies hand you real empowerment to stand something up, and others carry more bureaucracy than government does. It depends on where you land and which team you join.
Stereotypes to retire. Do whatever you can to avoid sounding like you work at the DMV. When Ian said State Department to people outside government, some asked if he meant the department of motor vehicles! The best way to debunk stereotypes is through your actions. Ian has helped government executives move into tech, and he could tell early who would succeed: the curious, low-ego people who wanted to understand where the interesting work was happening. The ones who struggled were wedded to their GS level and past programs, with no interest in the other side.
Do not be an empire builder. I added this one from earlier AMAs. Focus on efficiency and on the output you oversaw or made happen, rather than headcount. When the private sector hears that you grew a team from 5 to 15, they may assume you will spend money like crazy.
Bottom Line
Ian's throughline was plain language, a clear ask, and curiosity. Describe your work the way you would to a stranger, say "I" about what you led, and learn the industry's vocabulary by talking to the people in it. Treat your first private sector role as a two or three year chapter that teaches you the business, and let go of the idea that your old level has to follow you. Humility speeds up the learning, and the learning is what gets you to the next level.
Thank you, Ian, for being so generous with your time and your stories!
———
If you want a tool built specifically for this transition, MissionPivot™ can help you translate your government experience, pressure-test your resume against the roles you’re targeting, and figure out what to do next.
