Issue 07
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 06 tracked 35,857 Cleared roles across 409 employer career pages. This issue reads 34,421 across 507.
Do not read that as a 4% market contraction. We are producing these numbers differently as of this issue: the scan now resolves the live size of the largest employer boards far more precisely than it did, and this is the most accurate Cleared count the memo has published. It is not comparable to Issue 06's, which ran high. Everything below is on the new basis, and fortnight-over-fortnight comparisons are left out where that change would make them meaningless.
Scan Volume
In the last 14 days, the agent scanned 82,323 GovCon contractor postings across 507 vetted employer careers pages.
Of those, 34,421 explicitly required Secret-or-above clearance. Roles surfaced to cleared candidates after scoring: 4,024.
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 34,421 cleared roles:
| Tier | Count | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Secret | 16,923 | 49.2% |
| TS | 5,092 | 14.8% |
| TS/SCI | 6,463 | 18.8% |
| TS/SCI + CI Poly | 1,736 | 5.0% |
| TS/SCI + Full Scope Poly | 4,207 | 12.2% |
Secret is 49.2% of Cleared roles (16,923), the first reading below half. Above it, 36.0% sits at TS/SCI or higher (12,406): TS/SCI proper at 18.8% (6,463), Full Scope Poly at 12.2% (4,207), CI Poly at 5.0% (1,736). Straight TS accounts for the remaining 14.8% (5,092). The shape here is the story: the closer you get to the top of the clearance stack, the smaller and more durable the pool. Roughly one Cleared posting in eight now carries a Full Scope Poly requirement.
Confidential-tier roles excluded from totals above (52 in window — functionally rare in modern GovCon).
Top Hiring Contractors
GovCon employers with the most cleared (Secret+) postings:
| # | Contractor | Cleared | Most common tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Northrop Grumman | 2,523 | Secret |
| 2 | RTX (Raytheon / Collins / Pratt & Whitney) | 2,152 | Secret |
| 3 | Booz Allen Hamilton | 1,662 | TS/SCI |
| 4 | CACI | 1,292 | TS/SCI |
| 5 | Leidos | 1,231 | Secret |
| 6 | Peraton | 1,123 | TS/SCI + FSP |
| 7 | Amentum | 1,094 | Secret |
| 8 | Lockheed Martin | 1,058 | Secret |
| 9 | GDIT (General Dynamics IT) | 875 | Secret |
| 10 | SAIC | 679 | Secret |
Northrop Grumman is the #1 Cleared employer at 2,523 roles, with RTX at 2,152 and Booz Allen Hamilton at 1,662. Then CACI (1,292), Leidos (1,231), Peraton (1,123), Amentum (1,094).
Lockheed Martin is #8 at 1,058. It was #1 in this memo's first five issues. Some of that fall is the counting adjustment we made, but here is the part that does not depend on our measurement at all: Lockheed's own careers site lists 1,579 US openings today. The Internet Archive's capture of that same page from June 6 shows 4,755. Their board is a third of what it was ten weeks ago!
GDIT holds #9 (875) and SAIC enters the top ten at #10 (679) in its second fortnight on the scan. BAE Systems drops out. The top 10 hold 39.8% of Cleared demand, the lowest concentration this memo has recorded — 507 sources on the scan is part of that, and so is the largest employer shedding two thirds of its board.
Coverage went from 409 employer career pages to 507. No marquee prime this time. Issue 06 brought SAIC and the Cleared arms of Amazon and Microsoft; this fortnight is 100 additions from the Cleared mid-market and below.
Space and geospatial: Umbra, Advanced Space, Omitron, SciTec, Accelint. Cyber and SIGINT services: REDLattice, Dark Wolf Solutions, Paragon Cyber Solutions, SecureStrux, Ring0 Technologies, P-11 Security. Defense software and platform shops: Rancher Government Solutions, Lynx Software Technologies, Sigma Defense, Rackner, Oteemo, VivSoft Technologies. A bench of ANC and 8(a) holdings: Olgoonik, Delaware Nation Industries, the three Oneida operating companies, Powder River Industries. And mid-market services: Credence Management Solutions, Edgewater Federal Solutions, Planned Systems International, TechFlow, Technica Corporation, AVIAN, Orbis Operations.
One employer came off the scan, which is covered in the Public Trust section below. The standing caveat still holds, smaller than it was: a few majors and FFRDCs remain outside the scan, so the true Cleared market is larger than what is counted here.
Top Job Titles
The roles employers post most across the cleared pool:
| # | Title | Cleared postings |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Systems Engineer | 873 |
| 2 | Software Engineer | 820 |
| 3 | Program Manager | 332 |
| 4 | Network Engineer | 326 |
| 5 | Systems Administrator | 324 |
| 6 | Data Scientist | 239 |
| 7 | Software Developer | 165 |
| 8 | DevOps Engineer | 149 |
| 9 | Electrical Engineer | 133 |
| 10 | Information Systems Security Officer | 127 |
Systems Engineer leads at 873 Cleared roles, Software Engineer follows at 820, and the two of them are more than double the next title on the list. Program Manager is #3 at 332. Then the interesting rung: Network Engineer (326) sits just ahead of Systems Administrator (324), two postings apart — the specialty seat edging the generalist one, which is the same direction Issue 06 saw. Data Scientist reads 239, DevOps Engineer 149, and Information Systems Security Officer closes the table at 127.
Titles are normalized before counting: seniority prefixes and level suffixes are merged into the base title, and clearance or work-mode tags are stripped — “Sr. Systems Engineer II (TS/SCI)” counts toward “Systems Engineer.”
Geographic Concentration
Where the cleared roles are based:
| Region | Cleared roles | Share |
|---|---|---|
| DC Metro | 11,572 | 39.4% |
| Huntsville | 1,185 | 4.0% |
| Los Angeles Metro | 1,045 | 3.6% |
| Massachusetts | 789 | 2.7% |
| Tucson | 596 | 2.0% |
| Colorado Springs | 572 | 1.9% |
| Tampa | 534 | 1.8% |
| Overseas | 506 | 1.7% |
| Remote-eligible | 478 | 1.6% |
| Denver Metro | 332 | 1.1% |
| Hawaii / INDOPACOM | 316 | 1.1% |
| San Antonio | 204 | 0.7% |
| St. Louis | 149 | 0.5% |
| Augusta | 65 | 0.2% |
| Other (distributed) | 11,008 | 37.5% |
DC Metro is 39.4% of Cleared roles (11,572), up from 37.7% — though part of that rise is arithmetic rather than hiring, since the postings that came out of the count this fortnight were disproportionately prime plant sites rather than Beltway desks. Huntsville is #2 at 4.0% (1,185), ahead of Los Angeles Metro at 3.6% (1,045) — Redstone above SoCal aerospace, a reversal of Issue 06's order that arrives in the same fortnight the most SoCal-exposed prime cut its board hardest. Behind them: Massachusetts 2.7% (789), Tucson 2.0% (596), Colorado Springs 1.9% (572), Tampa 1.8% (534), Overseas 1.7% (506). "Other" is 37.5% (11,008) — the plant-site geography of the primes, Fort Worth and Marietta and Melbourne and Orlando, and the category that shrank most when Lockheed's postings came down.
Locations are drawn from the postings themselves where available. About 15% of Cleared roles this fortnight carried no structured location and are excluded from the regional breakdown, an improvement on last issue's 18%.
Top Skills In Demand
Most frequently required across the cleared role pool:
| # | Skill | Cleared roles requiring |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Python | 6,258 |
| 2 | AWS | 4,559 |
| 3 | C++ | 2,723 |
| 4 | Docker | 2,403 |
| 5 | Kubernetes | 2,401 |
Python leads by a distance at 6,258 Cleared roles, wanted at every tier. AWS holds #2 (4,559) and C++ #3 (2,723), still the defense-industrial tell. At the bottom of the table Docker (2,403) and Kubernetes (2,401) are two roles apart — a genuine tie, and close enough that the ordering will flip on noise. Issue 06 put that gap at 37 and called it closing; it closed. The honest read is that Cleared job descriptions now ask for the container runtime and the orchestrator at the same rate, which was not true six months ago.
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: 2,728 Public Trust-eligible postings.
Top hiring contractors
| Contractor | Count |
|---|---|
| Akima | 213 |
| Leidos | 201 |
| Amentum | 182 |
| Guidehouse | 159 |
| Peraton | 125 |
| SAIC | 122 |
| CACI | 119 |
| GDIT (General Dynamics IT) | 94 |
| Steampunk | 90 |
| ICF International | 65 |
Top regions
| Region | Count | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Other (distributed) | 1,179 | 43.2% |
| DC Metro | 774 | 28.4% |
| Remote-eligible | 219 | 8.0% |
| San Antonio | 50 | 1.8% |
| Denver Metro | 25 | 0.9% |
| Hawaii / INDOPACOM | 25 | 0.9% |
| Los Angeles Metro | 21 | 0.8% |
| Huntsville | 14 | 0.5% |
| Overseas | 13 | 0.5% |
| Tucson | 9 | 0.3% |
| Colorado Springs | 7 | 0.3% |
| Massachusetts | 4 | 0.1% |
| Tampa | 3 | 0.1% |
| Augusta | 2 | 0.1% |
| St. Louis | 1 | 0.0% |
Public Trust reads 2,728 roles. Akima leads at 213, then Leidos (201), Amentum (182), Guidehouse (159), Peraton (125), SAIC (122), CACI (119), GDIT (94), Steampunk (90) and ICF International (65).
One absence is deliberate. Contact Government Services was #2 last issue at 239, and it is gone from this table because we pulled it out of the scan. Issue 06 flagged its board as an evergreen catalog, and the follow-up bore that out: 1,419 postings covering 296 distinct titles, the top ones cloned across eleven to fifteen cities each, median posting age 144 days, with the whole board wiped and reposted roughly every six months. Postings that never close are not demand, and carrying them was inflating this table. Its 239 are not 239 Public Trust jobs that disappeared this fortnight — they were never 239 jobs.
The remote gap is the durable finding here: 8.0% of Public Trust postings are remote-eligible against 1.6% of Cleared ones. The SCIF dependency, quantified, and it has not moved in three issues.
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
Two things happened this fortnight and they need to be kept apart.
The first is a change in how we count. The scan now resolves the live size of the largest boards much more precisely, and the effect is concentrated in the primes at the top of the table.
The second is Lockheed Martin's, and it is the larger story. Their board has gone from 4,755 openings on June 6 to 1,579 today. I am citing the June figure from the Internet Archive's capture of Lockheed's own careers page and the current one from that same page, because in an issue where our own method changed, a number this big should be sourced to the employer rather than to us. A third of the board remains. Lockheed was the largest Cleared employer in this memo's first five issues and now sits eighth. I won't guess at the program-level cause from posting counts, but a contraction that size at the top of the industry is exactly what this memo exists to put on the record.
For candidates, the practical note is where the floor held. Secret-tier volume absorbed most of the decline. TS/SCI and above is 36% of the Cleared market, against 35.6% in Issue 05 and 34.9% in Issue 06, and roughly one posting in eight now wants a Full Scope Poly. The top of the clearance stack is not where this market is shrinking.
— Rahul Pandhi Founder, ClearMatch