If you wanted to work for the CIA but thought you wouldn’t make it through the notoriously long hiring process, now may be the time to try again. The CIA has made concerted efforts to reduce the hiring time and reduce the barriers that keep them from achieving a more diverse workforce. Increasing applicant pools is another piece of the CIA’s plans, according to Juliane Gallina, the associate deputy director for the Directorate of Digital Innovation at the CIA. At a recent Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA) event, Gallina said that the security clearance process is long, and that is difficult to change.
“There’s a lot of focus on not just [the hiring process], but also helping to encourage the right people to apply,” Gallina said. “[We have] different channels for applications that didn’t exist before, different ways of actually going out and proactively looking for the right candidates and encouraging people to apply, [and] creating relationships with academic institutions,” Gallina said.
Despite the challenges, Gallina says the CIA plans to reduce the median hiring time by this December. And the agency is pushing to decrease the clearance process from 600 days to 180 days.
Contract Opportunities to Watch: Raytheon
Raytheon Missiles & Defense has been selected to develop the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile for the U.S. Air Force (USAF). HACM is a first-of-its-kind weapon developed in conjunction with the Southern Cross Integrated Flight Research Experiment (SCIFiRE), a U.S. and Australia project arrangement.
Under this contract, the Raytheon Missiles & Defense and Northrop Grumman team will deliver operationally ready missiles to the USAF. Raytheon Technologies and Northrop Grumman have been working together since 2019 to develop, produce and integrate Northrop Grumman’s scramjet engines onto Raytheon’s air-breathing hypersonic weapons. Their combined efforts enable both companies to produce air-breathing hypersonic weapons, the next generation of tactical missile systems.
Key Employer in the Cleared Industry: AMERICAN SYSTEMS
Cleared Opportunities
Enabled Intelligence, Inc. is a provider of secure and accurate data labeling services to enable artificial intelligence applications. The company plans to invest $1.4 million to expand its headquarters in Fairfax County, VA. Enabled Intelligence is adding over 10,000 square feet of classified and unclassified office space to its operations located at 6400 Arlington Boulevard in Falls Church to increase capacity. The project will create 117 new jobs.
“We are excited to expand our operations here in Virginia. Our Fairfax County home is close to our federal customers, and we are able to draw on the highly qualified Virginia workforce of high-tech neurodiverse professionals and military veterans,” said Peter Kant, CEO, Enabled Intelligence, Inc.
