Issue 04
Every other Tuesday, the ClearMatch agent reports what it saw in the Cleared GovCon job market: total volume, who's hiring, what skills are in demand, where the work sits. Anonymized aggregate intelligence built from the same daily scan the agent runs for every Cleared candidate on the platform. No promotional fluff.
Issue 03 tracked 15,768 Cleared roles across 181 employer career pages. This fortnight: 27,724 across 244. Don't read that as a market that grew 76% in two weeks — it didn't. Two things moved the number. We added 63 employers to the scan, and, more consequentially, the scan now reads each posting at the largest employers in full rather than from the short summary card. The biggest primes list thousands of roles whose clearance requirement lives in the body of the job description, not the title — so until we read the full text, most of their Cleared roles were invisible to us. Reading them changed the shape of the market more than its size. Treat this issue as a deeper baseline, not a jump.
// Scan Volume
In the last 14 days, the agent scanned 73,707 GovCon contractor postings across 244 vetted employer careers pages.
Of those, 27,724 explicitly required Secret-or-above clearance. Roles surfaced to cleared candidates after scoring: 848.
Every count and share in this memo reflects the GovCon employer career pages the agent tracks — a large and growing sample, not the entire Cleared market. Figures like “share of demand” are of that tracked set.
// Clearance Mix
Of the 27,724 cleared roles:
| Tier | Count | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Secret | 14,687 | 53.0% |
| TS | 3,610 | 13.0% |
| TS/SCI | 5,065 | 18.3% |
| TS/SCI + CI Poly | 1,046 | 3.8% |
| TS/SCI + Full Scope Poly | 3,316 | 12.0% |
Secret is 53% of the Cleared market (14,687 roles), a slightly larger share now that the Secret-heavy defense industrials are read in full. Above it: TS/SCI + Full Scope Poly at 3,316 roles (12%), TS/SCI proper at 18.3% (5,065), and TS/SCI + CI Poly at 3.8% (1,046). About a third of Cleared roles — 34.1% — sit at TS/SCI or above, the continuous IC mission-systems demand, steady in shape fortnight to fortnight.
Confidential-tier roles excluded from totals above (48 in window — functionally rare in modern GovCon).
// Top Hiring Contractors
GovCon employers with the most cleared (Secret+) postings:
| # | Contractor | Cleared | Most common tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lockheed Martin | 3,108 | Secret |
| 2 | RTX (Raytheon / Collins / Pratt & Whitney) | 2,102 | Secret |
| 3 | Northrop Grumman | 2,059 | Secret |
| 4 | Booz Allen Hamilton | 1,663 | Secret |
| 5 | CACI | 1,255 | TS/SCI + FSP |
| 6 | Amentum | 1,144 | Secret |
| 7 | Peraton | 1,119 | TS/SCI |
| 8 | Leidos | 1,090 | TS/SCI + FSP |
| 9 | GDIT (General Dynamics IT) | 808 | Secret |
| 10 | KBR | 525 | Secret |
Lockheed Martin holds #1 at 3,108 Cleared roles — but the story this issue is everyone behind it. RTX jumps to #2 (2,102) and Northrop Grumman to #3 (2,059), the classic mission-systems primes now read at full depth. Booz Allen (#4, 1,663), CACI (#5, 1,255), and Amentum (#6, 1,144) follow, then Peraton (#7, 1,119), Leidos (#8, 1,090), GDIT (#9, 808), and KBR (#10, 525).
Last issue read the market as de-concentrating — the top 10 down to ~47% of Cleared demand. Reading the biggest employers in full reverses that: the top 10 now hold ~54%. The primes were exactly the names the scan saw least completely, so filling them in pulls demand back toward the top rather than away from it. Lockheed is still the single largest at ~11% of the Cleared market on its own, but RTX and Northrop now stand beside it as some of the largest Cleared employers in the country — mission-systems shops that were never small, just under-read.
Coverage went from 181 employer career pages to 244 — 63 net new sources since Issue 03. The additions still skew toward the frontier: new-space and defense-tech (SpaceX, BigBear.ai, Saab, GE Aerospace), a research heavyweight (Johns Hopkins APL), and a thicker cyber-services and Alaska Native Corporation bench (Tanium, Optiv, SHI International, Keaki Technologies, NANA Regional).
But the larger change this fortnight isn't breadth, it's depth. The scan now pulls the full job description for postings at the largest primes, where before it read only the summary card. That's what surfaced the Cleared roles at RTX, Northrop, Booz Allen, Amentum, and Leidos the earlier read couldn't see — their clearance lines live in the JD body. Several major primes and FFRDCs still aren't in the scan, and we keep adding each issue, so the true Cleared market is larger than the numbers here.
// Geographic Concentration
Where the cleared roles are based:
| Region | Cleared roles | Share |
|---|---|---|
| DC Metro | 7,377 | 33.0% |
| Huntsville | 768 | 3.4% |
| Los Angeles Metro | 718 | 3.2% |
| Massachusetts | 674 | 3.0% |
| Tucson | 568 | 2.5% |
| Tampa | 381 | 1.7% |
| Colorado Springs | 360 | 1.6% |
| Overseas | 326 | 1.5% |
| Remote-eligible | 255 | 1.1% |
| Hawaii / INDOPACOM | 209 | 0.9% |
| Denver Metro | 182 | 0.8% |
| San Antonio | 142 | 0.6% |
| St. Louis | 73 | 0.3% |
| Augusta | 44 | 0.2% |
| Other (distributed) | 10,255 | 45.9% |
DC Metro leads at 33% (7,377 roles). The rest of the map fills in behind it: Huntsville at 3.4% (768, Redstone / missile defense), Los Angeles Metro at 3.2% (718, SoCal aerospace), Massachusetts at 3% (674), Tucson at 2.5% (568, RTX missile systems, now read in full), Tampa at 1.7% (381, CENTCOM/SOCOM), and Colorado Springs at 1.6% (360, Space Force / SPACECOM). Smaller hubs register too — Hawaii / INDOPACOM, Denver, San Antonio, St. Louis (NGA), and Augusta (Fort Eisenhower, Army Cyber / NSA Georgia).
The 45.9% "Other" is the defense industrial base outside the named hubs — Fort Worth, Marietta, Melbourne, Orlando. Reading the primes in full pushed "Other" up: the mission-systems work sits at plant sites across the country, not inside the Beltway.
Locations are drawn from the postings themselves where available. About 19% of Cleared roles this fortnight carried no structured location and are excluded from the regional breakdown — down from ~23% last issue, since the full-detail read of the largest employers carries better structured location data than the summary card did.
// Top Skills In Demand
Most frequently required across the cleared role pool:
| # | Skill | Cleared roles requiring |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Python | 4,746 |
| 2 | AWS | 3,028 |
| 3 | C++ | 2,395 |
| 4 | Docker | 1,890 |
| 5 | Kubernetes | 1,791 |
Python is the most-required skill by a wide margin again (4,746 Cleared roles), wanted at every clearance tier. AWS holds #2 (3,028) and C++ sits at a strong #3 (2,395) — the defense-industrial tell, and it's more prominent now that the mission-systems primes (Lockheed, RTX, Northrop, L3Harris) are read in full: those are heavy C++ shops for avionics and mission systems. Docker (1,890) and Kubernetes (1,791) round out the top five, the ongoing DoD container-modernization push. Reading the primes in full tilts the skill mix back toward systems engineering — the shallower read had over-weighted the cloud-native newcomers.
Skill demand is measured across a set of in-demand GovCon skills we track, refreshed each quarter as the market shifts.
// Adjacent Market: Public Trust
Public Trust isn’t a security clearance — it’s the federal suitability tier for civilian fed work (CISA, IRS, VA, USDA, HHS) handling sensitive-but-unclassified information. Included separately because many cleared candidates dual-purpose this pool between cleared engagements, and the demand signal is its own market.
In the last 14 days: 2,079 Public Trust-eligible postings.
Top hiring contractors
| Contractor | Count |
|---|---|
| Contact Government Services | 237 |
| Amentum | 195 |
| Guidehouse | 145 |
| Leidos | 136 |
| Peraton | 118 |
| CACI | 105 |
| Keaki Technologies (Alakaina Family of Companies) | 91 |
| GDIT (General Dynamics IT) | 88 |
| Steampunk | 82 |
| Akima | 70 |
Top regions
| Region | Count | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Other (distributed) | 1,037 | 49.9% |
| DC Metro | 624 | 30.0% |
| Remote-eligible | 120 | 5.8% |
| Los Angeles Metro | 30 | 1.4% |
| San Antonio | 29 | 1.4% |
| Massachusetts | 23 | 1.1% |
| Overseas | 13 | 0.6% |
| Colorado Springs | 7 | 0.3% |
| Tucson | 3 | 0.1% |
| Huntsville | 3 | 0.1% |
| Hawaii / INDOPACOM | 3 | 0.1% |
| Denver Metro | 2 | 0.1% |
| Tampa | 2 | 0.1% |
| St. Louis | 1 | 0.0% |
Public Trust reached 2,079 roles. Contact Government Services leads at 237, with Amentum (195), Guidehouse (145), Leidos (136), and Peraton (118) behind — the civilian-fed services and ANC firms, several of them the same primes whose Cleared work the fuller read also surfaced. Public Trust skews more remote-friendly than Cleared work: a different security posture, fewer SCIF dependencies.
Public Trust counts reflect JD postings that explicitly name "Public Trust," "MBI," or "Tier 1/2/4." Many civilian fed contractor roles are PT-eligible in practice but don't use that language in the listing — the agency runs the suitability investigation post-hire. Actual PT-eligible volume is materially higher than the explicit count shown here.
// Founder Note
The honest read on this issue is a methodology one. The Cleared market did not grow 76% in a fortnight. Two things moved the number: 63 more employers on the scan, and — the bigger lever — the scan now reads every posting at the largest employers in full, not from the summary card. The biggest primes carry their clearance requirement in the body of the job description, so until we read the full text most of their Cleared roles didn't count. Prior issues ran low at the primes for the same reason. So 27,724 isn't a market that grew — it's the Cleared market at the primes coming into focus.
What that focus shows is worth sitting with. Last issue read demand as spreading out across more names. It isn't. Reading the biggest employers in full, the top 10 hold ~54% of Cleared demand, and RTX and Northrop stand alongside Lockheed as some of the largest Cleared employers in the country. The mission-systems primes were never small — they were the part of the market we were seeing least completely.
We'll keep widening the scan. This fortnight the gain was depth: reading the whole of what the biggest employers post, so a cleared candidate's agent matches against the real shape of prime demand rather than a summary of it.
— Rahul Pandhi Founder, ClearMatch