Echo the above, but I actually had to commute from Maryland to NIH HQ so it wasn't that big a deal. The DC license forces you to get an FBI check which is trivial for most people, but is a bit more of a privacy invasion than other states. If you are not working in civil service, each jurisdiction (MD, DC, VA, PA) have different processes. The one I don't recommend is the DC one as it's such a niche employment market that it's particularly cozy to grads from one particular school to the exclusion of others (giga might know who I'm talking about). If you HAVE to live in Northern Virginia (as in you don't have the flexibility to live in the District itself), make sure you know which specific area you live in bounded by the beltway (The Arlington-Annandale, the Alexandrian, the McLean, the Fairfax, and the Vienna) as it really will affect your commuting. For pharmacy, most of the civil service positions are on the Northern side of DC in MD rather than South of the city in Northern Virginia.
If you're moving due to your spouse having a civil service position, most agencies will allow you to telework from either a telework center (which they are in the process of closing) or in an intragency office building to accomodate your spouse's hard office requirement (this works for both women and men and with gay/lesbian marriage or partnership).
And if you're informatics and are willing to commute to Hyattsville or Farragut, you'll be in good company with informatics knowledge jobs. VA, CMS, and CDC are hiring right now for civil service. If you happen to be from UMN, UIC, or Purdue, there's a strong support network in Northern Virginia for those graduates to plug into as it's a common area for them to relocate. FDA is always hiring pharmacists, but my warning to prospective applicants is that the FDA is a circumstantial place to work and there are cliques. Some offices there are really inspiring, others, not so much.
