The Washington DC area holds more cleared workers than anywhere else in the country. Northern Virginia, the District, and the Maryland suburbs run on classified work. That is the part most midsize employers get right. The part they get wrong is how to actually reach those people before a defense prime does.

You are not short on cleared veterans in this market. You are short on a way to find them. The big primes have full recruiting teams camped outside the gates. You do not. So you post a job, wait, and lose the good ones to a company that moved first.

This guide fixes that. It covers which local bases and agencies feed the DC cleared talent pool. It covers the commute geography that decides who will actually take your offer. And it covers how a midsize company competes for cleared veterans without a recruiting army. I am Brad Tachi. I am a Navy Diver veteran and I built BMR after my own messy transition. I have spent years on the hiring side of the table, and the DC cleared market plays by its own rules.

Why Is the DC Area the Densest Cleared Talent Market?

The numbers are not close. The DC metro has more federal agencies, intelligence components, and defense contractors per square mile than any region in the country. That mix creates a steady flow of people who already hold a clearance.

Three things drive the supply. First, the agencies themselves. The Pentagon, the intelligence community, and dozens of defense offices all sit here. Second, the contractors. Northern Virginia alone holds thousands of GovCon firms. Third, the bases. Service members rotate through DC-area installations and separate into the local economy.

When a veteran here leaves the service, they often already have an active clearance. That clearance is the single most expensive thing to add to a new hire. A veteran who walks in with one saves you months and real money. For the full math on that, see our breakdown of the cost savings of a cleared veteran hire.

Which Local Bases and Agencies Feed the Cleared Pool?

Cleared talent in DC does not come from one place. It comes from a ring of installations and agencies around the metro. Knowing where they sit tells you where your candidates live and commute.

Here are the main feeders for cleared veterans separating into the DC market.

Each feeder sends a different kind of veteran. Fort Meade leans cyber and intelligence. Belvoir leans engineering and logistics. The Pentagon sends staff and program leaders. Match your open roles to the right feeder and you stop fishing in the wrong pond.

If you also pull talent from the Tidewater region, our guide on recruiting veterans near Norfolk's naval station covers that pipeline. A lot of those sailors end up in DC.

How Does Commute Geography Decide Who Takes Your Offer?

The DC region is huge and traffic is brutal. Where your office sits changes who will say yes. A cleared veteran in Maryland will rarely commute to a job in far southern Virginia. The reverse is just as true.

Think of the metro in three rough zones. Each one has its own talent and its own commute math.

The third zone is the District itself. Roles there skew toward policy, program management, and agency support. Cleared veterans will commute in by rail, but many prefer a job closer to home.

Here is the simple rule. Recruit from the zone closest to your office first. A clean 25-minute commute beats a higher salary across two counties. Remote and hybrid roles widen the pool, but cleared work often needs people on site. Be honest about that in your posting.

What Does a Clearance Actually Tell You About a Candidate?

A clearance is more than a checkbox. It tells you the federal government already vetted this person. That vetting is run by the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA), the agency that handles most background investigations.

There are three main levels. Each one means a different depth of investigation.

• Confidential: The base level, backed by a lower-tier investigation.
• Secret: The most common level, backed by a Tier 3 investigation.
• Top Secret: The deepest level, backed by a Tier 5 single scope background investigation. Often paired with SCI access.

Most cleared veterans started with a Standard Form 86, the questionnaire for national security positions. That form drives the whole background check. When you see an active clearance on a resume, it means that whole process already happened.

One big shift matters for you. Under the federal Trusted Workforce 2.0 effort, most cleared people are now in continuous vetting. The government monitors them in real time. It no longer waits years for a reinvestigation. This is phasing out the old periodic reinvestigation cycle. Cleared workers still file updated vetting forms on a five-year cycle. But the old full reinvestigations, on the five-year TS and ten-year Secret schedule, are no longer the default for most people. You can read the official direction on this at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Reading these terms on a resume takes practice. Our guide on how to read a security clearance on a resume walks through what each line means.

How Does a Midsize Company Compete With the Defense Primes?

The big primes have brand names and huge recruiting teams. You do not need to match them. You need to beat them on the things midsize firms are actually better at.

Veterans leave large defense shops all the time because they feel like a number. A midsize company can offer something the primes cannot. Real ownership. A short chain of command. A direct line to leadership. Say that out loud in your pitch.

Speed is your other weapon. Primes move slow. Their hiring can drag for weeks. A midsize firm can make an offer in days. For cleared veterans who want to keep working without a gap, speed wins deals. We cover this in detail in our piece on how to reduce time-to-fill on hard cleared roles.

If you are new to this market, our guide on how a midsize company hires cleared veterans lays out the basics without the prime-scale overhead.

Where Do You Find DC Cleared Veterans Before the Primes Do?

Posting a job and waiting is the slow lane. The good cleared veterans get scooped before they ever hit a job board. You need to reach them earlier and warmer.

Here is a simple order of operations for the DC market.

SkillBridge is a real edge for cleared roles. The intern is still being paid by the military, so you get a working tryout at no salary cost. It is also documented veteran outreach. The Department of Labor backs employer-side hiring help on its VETS employer page.

For the base-office play, our employer guide on how to recruit veterans through base TAP offices walks the whole approach.

Why Does a Cleared DC Hire Pay for Itself?

Adding a clearance from scratch is slow and costly. A Top Secret investigation can run for many months. During that wait, the seat sits empty and the work backs up. In DC, where contracts often demand cleared staff on day one, that gap can cost you a bid.

A cleared veteran flips that math. They start producing right away. No long investigation. No empty seat. No missed contract milestone. In a market this competitive, that head start is the whole game.

The DC area also has a high cost of living, so cleared veterans expect fair pay. But they value more than salary. A short commute, a clear mission, and a fast hiring process all carry real weight. Compete on those and you do not have to out-spend a prime to win the hire.

What If the Veteran's Clearance Has Lapsed?

Not every strong candidate has an active clearance. Some let it lapse after they left a cleared job. Do not skip them. A lapsed clearance is often easy to reinstate.

There is a general window after a clearance goes inactive where it can be reactivated without starting from zero. The exact rules depend on the agency and the gap. This part is high-stakes. Confirm the current direction with DCSA and your facility security officer before you commit a start date.

The key point is simple. A veteran with a recently lapsed clearance is far cheaper and faster to onboard than someone with no clearance at all. Our guide on hiring a veteran whose clearance lapsed covers the reinstatement window.

You can also screen for clearability before anyone holds a clearance. Some veterans are clean candidates who simply never needed one. Our piece on how to screen veterans for clearability shows how to spot them.

How Should a Midsize Employer Set Up to Win in DC?

The DC cleared market rewards employers who move with intent. The talent is there. The unemployment rate for Gulf War-era II veterans sat at just 3.6 percent in 2025, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Cleared veterans are working, not waiting. Your job is to reach the right ones first.

Build your motion around three habits. Match each open role to the right local feeder base. Recruit from the commute zone nearest your office. And reach veterans early through transition offices, a cleared talent pool, and SkillBridge.

If you build cyber teams, that pipeline has its own playbook. See our guide on building a cybersecurity veteran hiring pipeline, and our overview of how to find cleared veteran talent for defense roles.

BMR keeps a growing pool of veteran candidates. Over 1,000 new profiles are added every month, and more than 60,000 resumes have been built on the platform. Many of those veterans hold or recently held a clearance and target the DC market. You can reach them directly instead of waiting on a job board.

If you want to tap that pool for your cleared DC roles, reach out to access BMR's veteran talent pool. Tell us the roles and the commute zone, and we will help you connect with the right cleared veterans.