[britta]

You need to move to DC to work for USDS (https://www.usds.gov/join#relocation), but you can work for 18F from anywhere in the US (https://18f.gsa.gov/join/). The login.gov team includes both USDS and 18F team members (as the blog post says).

Also the salary cap is $161,900, as shown in this pay grade table for SF: https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries... Not a top-of-the-line private sector salary, but not some kind of hardship.

[Johnny555]

160k is a run of the mill senior engineer salary.... The best engineers in the world can earn 300k or more in Silicon Valley. It takes an altruistic engineer to give up half his salary to work for the public.