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: 22,914 across 240. The same caution as last issue still applies — the Cleared market did not grow 45% in two weeks. We added 59 employers to the scan, so a market that was always this size is simply coming further into view. What's worth reading this issue is what the wider net is doing to the shape of demand: the #1 prime is posting more Cleared roles than ever and losing market share at the same time.
// Scan Volume
In the last 14 days, the agent scanned 73,497 GovCon contractor postings across 240 vetted employer careers pages.
Of those, 22,914 explicitly required Secret-or-above clearance. Roles surfaced to cleared candidates after scoring: 750.
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 22,914 cleared roles:
| Tier | Count | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Secret | 11,839 | 51.7% |
| TS | 3,157 | 13.8% |
| TS/SCI | 4,437 | 19.4% |
| TS/SCI + CI Poly | 847 | 3.7% |
| TS/SCI + Full Scope Poly | 2,634 | 11.5% |
Secret is just over half the Cleared market again (51.7%, 11,839 roles) — the commodity tier, flat fortnight to fortnight. The top of the stack grew in absolute terms as the net widened: TS/SCI + Full Scope Poly reached 2,634 roles, up from 1,860, still 11.5% of the pool. TS/SCI proper sits at 19.4% (4,437) and another 3.7% (847) carries TS/SCI + CI Poly. More than a third of Cleared roles — 34.6% — are TS/SCI or above. The continuous IC mission-systems demand held its shape even as the Secret-heavy industrial base around it got bigger.
Confidential-tier roles excluded from totals above (33 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 | 3,101 | Secret |
| 2 | Peraton | 1,300 | TS/SCI |
| 3 | RTX (Raytheon / Collins / Pratt & Whitney) | 1,200 | Secret |
| 4 | Northrop Grumman | 954 | Secret |
| 5 | Booz Allen Hamilton | 915 | Secret |
| 6 | CACI | 851 | TS/SCI + FSP |
| 7 | GDIT (General Dynamics IT) | 737 | TS/SCI + FSP |
| 8 | Leidos | 524 | Secret |
| 9 | L3Harris | 502 | Secret |
| 10 | Amentum | 461 | Secret |
Lockheed Martin is #1 again at 3,101 Cleared roles — and this is the issue's clearest signal. Lockheed added roughly 390 roles since Issue 03, yet its share of the Cleared market fell from about 17% to under 14%. The market grew around it faster than it grew. The top 10 contractors now hold about 46% of Cleared demand, roughly flat from ~47% last issue and down from ~55% two issues ago. The concentration that defined this market a month ago keeps loosening as the scan reaches further into the mid-tier.
Peraton holds #2 (1,300 Cleared, modal TS/SCI, DC-centered). RTX sits at #3 (1,200) — Tucson missile systems and the wider Raytheon mission-systems base. Northrop Grumman (#4, 954) and Booz Allen (#5, 915) round out the primes near the top. CACI (#6) and GDIT (#7) again show TS/SCI + Full Scope Poly as their most common Cleared tier, hiring high up the stack rather than the Secret-heavy mix of the defense industrials. Anduril, #8 last issue, dropped out of the top 10: the defense-tech entrants post Cleared roles, but not yet at the depth of the legacy services bench.
Coverage went from 181 employer career pages to 240 — 59 net new sources since Issue 03. The additions cluster in three places. A cyber and IT-services layer landed in force (Tanium, Optiv, SHI International, ConvergeOne, Quzara, Valiant Solutions). The Alaska Native Corporation and 8(a) services bench got thicker (Keaki Technologies, NANA Regional, The Tatitlek Corporation, Cayuse Holdings, Honu Services). And several heavyweight names entered the scan for the first time: SpaceX, Johns Hopkins APL, GE Aerospace, Saab Inc., BigBear.ai, Astrion.
As in prior issues, not all of it lands as Cleared volume — SpaceX and the new-manufacturing names post plenty of roles but name an explicit clearance on only a minority of them, so they add more to the scan's denominator than to the cleared count. Several major primes and FFRDCs still aren't in the scan, and we keep adding sources 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 | 6,451 | 36.6% |
| Los Angeles Metro | 605 | 3.4% |
| Huntsville | 607 | 3.4% |
| Massachusetts | 514 | 2.9% |
| Tucson | 311 | 1.8% |
| Tampa | 318 | 1.8% |
| Colorado Springs | 285 | 1.6% |
| Overseas | 264 | 1.5% |
| Remote-eligible | 234 | 1.3% |
| Hawaii / INDOPACOM | 177 | 1.0% |
| Denver Metro | 150 | 0.9% |
| San Antonio | 121 | 0.7% |
| St. Louis | 68 | 0.4% |
| Augusta | 37 | 0.2% |
| Other (distributed) | 7,480 | 42.4% |
DC Metro leads at 36.6% (6,451 roles). Its share fell from 40.4% last issue even as the count rose by roughly 2,000 — the same loosening showing up geographically. The rest of the constellation filled in: Huntsville at 3.4% (Redstone, missile defense), Los Angeles Metro at 3.4% (SoCal aerospace), Massachusetts at 2.9%, Tampa at 1.8% (CENTCOM/SOCOM), Tucson at 1.8% (RTX missile systems), and Colorado Springs at 1.6% (Space Force / SPACECOM). Smaller hubs now register too — San Antonio, St. Louis (NGA), Hawaii / INDOPACOM, and Augusta (Fort Eisenhower, Army Cyber / NSA Georgia).
The 42.4% "Other" is the defense industrial base outside the named hubs — Fort Worth, Marietta, Melbourne, Manchester, Orlando. No single site dominates; together they hold a large share of where Cleared work actually sits.
Locations are drawn from the postings themselves where available. About 23% of Cleared roles this fortnight carried no structured location and are excluded from the regional breakdown — down from ~30% last issue as our coverage of the newer sources matured. That share keeps shrinking as those feeds settle in.
// Top Skills In Demand
Most frequently required across the cleared role pool:
| # | Skill | Cleared roles requiring |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Python | 2,868 |
| 2 | AWS | 1,543 |
| 3 | C++ | 1,427 |
| 4 | Azure | 1,078 |
| 5 | Docker | 1,058 |
Python is the most-required skill by a wide margin again (2,868 Cleared roles), wanted at every clearance tier. The shift this fortnight is at #4: Azure entered the top five (1,078 roles), joining AWS at #2 (1,543). Both major clouds now sit in the top four — the clearest sign yet of the cloud-modernization pull on Cleared work, and the new cyber-services employers run cloud-native. C++ holds #3 (1,427), the defense-industrial tell: Lockheed, RTX, and L3Harris run heavy C++ shops for mission systems and avionics. Docker rounds out the top five (1,058); Kubernetes slipped just below it as Azure moved up.
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: 1,837 Public Trust-eligible postings.
Top hiring contractors
| Contractor | Count |
|---|---|
| Contact Government Services | 237 |
| Guidehouse | 133 |
| Peraton | 113 |
| Keaki Technologies (Alakaina Family of Companies) | 89 |
| Steampunk | 87 |
| Leidos | 83 |
| Amentum | 81 |
| CACI | 75 |
| Akima | 71 |
| GDIT (General Dynamics IT) | 71 |
Top regions
| Region | Count | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Other (distributed) | 858 | 46.7% |
| DC Metro | 582 | 31.7% |
| Remote-eligible | 106 | 5.8% |
| Los Angeles Metro | 29 | 1.6% |
| San Antonio | 29 | 1.6% |
| Massachusetts | 22 | 1.2% |
| Colorado Springs | 7 | 0.4% |
| Overseas | 4 | 0.2% |
| Huntsville | 3 | 0.2% |
| Hawaii / INDOPACOM | 3 | 0.2% |
| Denver Metro | 2 | 0.1% |
| Tucson | 2 | 0.1% |
| St. Louis | 1 | 0.1% |
| Tampa | 1 | 0.1% |
Public Trust jumped to 1,837 roles, up from 1,214 — again mostly the new coverage, as the civilian-fed services and ANC firms we added do heavy Public Trust work. The leader changed: Contact Government Services tops it at 237, ahead of Guidehouse (133) and Peraton (113), with Keaki Technologies, Steampunk, and Leidos close behind. 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
Same honest read as last issue, with a sharper edge. The 22,914 figure is bigger than 15,768 mostly because the scan got bigger — 181 employer career pages to 240. Two weeks did not grow the Cleared market by 45%.
What the wider net is now showing is worth more than the headline number. Lockheed Martin posted more Cleared roles this fortnight than last and still lost three points of market share. The top 10 hold about 46% of Cleared demand, down from ~55% a month ago. That gap is the mid-tier coming into view — the cyber-services firms, the Alaska Native and 8(a) bench, the names like SpaceX and Johns Hopkins APL that a cleared candidate's agent can now match against. The frontier of where Cleared work gets created sits exactly where a static job board is slowest to index, and it's the part we spent this fortnight pulling further into view.
We'll keep adding sources. Each one makes the shape clearer for the Cleared people reading this.
— Rahul Pandhi Founder, ClearMatch